Orion Browser Brings WebKit Speed and Privacy Focus to Mac Users

[Sunset Cassette]

I've been using Orion in tandem with Kagi for about six months now, and I have to say they make a really great pair.

Orion is fast, has the perk of gaining access to the Chrome Extension Store, and easily meets all of my daily browsing needs. The Mac app also pairs seamlessly with the mobile app, I know that has come to be expected, but it works well and deserves the recognition regardless.

Kagi is a very refreshing search engine experience, the quality of results are dramatically better than Google in 9/10 situations (it sometimes struggles with local inquiries like restaurants). Low value AI responses are not shoved in your face, you aren't bombarded with ads, etc.

Being the customer and paying a monthly subscription is far more appealing to me than using a free service that comes at the expense of becoming the product and having my data harvested.

 

[maxoakland]

I will not go back to Safari until it supports proper vertical tabs.

Does this browser support vertical tabs?

Why do people care about vertical tabs all of a sudden? Omni web had those years ago and it was a fun novelty but I changed back quickly

 

[maxoakland]

I've been using Orion in tandem with Kagi for about six months now, and I have to say they make a really great pair.

Orion is fast, has the perk of gaining access to the Chrome Extension Store, and easily meets all of my daily browsing needs. The Mac app also pairs seamlessly with the mobile app, I know that has come to be expected, but it works well and deserves the recognition regardless.

Kagi is a very refreshing search engine experience, the quality of results are dramatically better than Google in 9/10 situations (it sometimes struggles with local inquiries like restaurants). Low value AI responses are not shoved in your face, you aren't bombarded with ads, etc.

Being the customer and paying a monthly subscription is far more appealing to me than using a free service that comes at the expense of becoming the product and having my data harvested.

It’s amazing that Google has destroyed their product so throughly that Kagi can compete. I remember when people thought it was impossible because Google had such a lead and so many servers to dedicate

I’m gonna subscribe to Kagi one of these days

 

[MacBH928]

orion has plans to release windows and linux versions so in the future it will be like the only webkit (none chrome) multi platform browser.

When it comes to telemetry and privacy, its a core component of Kagi business model so we can trust them on that but imo its always better to go FOSS which brave and firefox provide. There is also helium, a light weight chromium and zen which is like firefox with a twist

 

[MacBH928]

How is it any different from Safari in that regard?

I've been using Orion in tandem with Kagi for about six months now, and I have to say they make a really great pair.

Orion is fast, has the perk of gaining access to the Chrome Extension Store, and easily meets all of my daily browsing needs. The Mac app also pairs seamlessly with the mobile app, I know that has come to be expected, but it works well and deserves the recognition regardless.

Kagi is a very refreshing search engine experience, the quality of results are dramatically better than Google in 9/10 situations (it sometimes struggles with local inquiries like restaurants). Low value AI responses are not shoved in your face, you aren't bombarded with ads, etc.

Being the customer and paying a monthly subscription is far more appealing to me than using a free service that comes at the expense of becoming the product and having my data harvested.

It’s amazing that Google has destroyed their product so throughly that Kagi can compete. I remember when people thought it was impossible because Google had such a lead and so many servers to dedicate

I’m gonna subscribe to Kagi one of these days

just to be clear, Kagi relies on other search engines for results and pays them money to do so (google, bing, yandex) they do not declare which ones they rely on. What they do is they take their results and filter them out to bring the better results out and clear any ads, ai, none relevant results. it has also thee benefit you can customize the search result page (css colors, no videos, no images, etc etc) . they also have ai subscription to the most popular LLMs.

The independent search engines are brave, mojeek(horrible in comparison), and soon pre-search will release independent index.

duckduckgo, startpage, and ecosia are just middle man for bing. there is also qwant.

 

[Apple_Robert]

orion has plans to release windows and linux versions so in the future it will be like the only webkit (none chrome) multi platform browser.

When it comes to telemetry and privacy, its a core component of Kagi business model so we can trust them on that but imo its always better to go FOSS which brave and firefox provide. There is also helium, a light weight chromium and zen which is like firefox with a twist

And why should anyone blindly trust Kagi? Can you name any audits that have been done on their software?

A lot of their website doesn't even work but, the part hocking the paid plans does.

I see a lot of people on here blindly jumping in the pool just so they can use extensions and have a fast browser. I don't necessarily see that as wise, especially when Kagi's all gives viewers of their website a few vague sentences with what appears to be a promise with no verified backing outside of their word.

 

[JaydenA]

Yay, finally. Been waiting for this one.

I have used Kagi search for very long time now - and it's awesome - not seeing a page of ads and AI slop and having very relevant results returned is worth de-googling/de-ducking/de-binging yourself. But until this, various hacks were needed to set the default search engine to Kagi.

It is nice to be able to skip the baked in search engines apple provides, and stick wholely with Kagi search. Reason enough for me to use Orion in itself.

Initial impressions, ah, so this can use both chrome and firefox extensions as well as safari ones like Noir.

It has a "do not tint liquid a** arrows with the website colour" setting which removes that annoying white arrow stuff in dark mode.

The search bar and website bar can easily be scooted to the top again without needing to go through layers in Settings, and the bottom icon row is small and not a pain.

I will try it a lot more before being sold, especially how it handles some of the more obnoxious full page/scroll past CSS based ads some sites use, but I am very pleased so far for the ad/slop free search Apple havn't baked into their choices now being able to be the default.

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

I've been maining Firefox on my Macs ever since Safari started being really really slow for some reason. Might try this but idk.

 

[svish]

Good to know. Not happy hearing about a subscription for a browser. A one time purchase would have been better.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Good to know. Not happy hearing about a subscription for a browser. A one time purchase would have been better.

Just making sure it's known: Orion is free to use.

Orion+ gives you:

So basically just supporting the development of the browser, and it does have a one time "donation" option:

 

[BigMcGuire]

And why should anyone blindly trust Kagi? Can you name any audits that have been done on their software?

A lot of their website doesn't even work but, the part hocking the paid plans does.

I see a lot of people on here blindly jumping in the pool just so they can use extensions and have a fast browser. I don't necessarily see that as wise, especially when Kagi's all gives viewers of their website a few vague sentences with what appears to be a promise with no verified backing outside of their word.

Being suspicious of unknown companies is a good thing - so I applaud this very much.

Kagi has been around for awhile. I've been using them for almost 2 years now - gotten to talk to the CEO and several members of their staff over the last year+. Their business model is privacy and removing ads. It's a small company that listens to its customers. While I don't use Orion, I do use Kagi's search engine - and I can't say enough good about it. I've watched several of their year end videos that answer a lot of questions:

and

- they're very open about their finances, cost of doing business, focus, etc.

More in response to your questions:

Privacy Protection explanation :

Kagi Search

Better search results with no ads. Welcome to Kagi (pronounced kah-gee), a paid search engine that gives power back to the user.

kagi.com

Kagi underwent a 3rd party independent security audit in 2022 I believe: https://blog.kagi.com/security-audit

I really like how I get search results that are not SEO littered, not advertisement focused, and how my searching data is private - I'm not profiting Google or advertisers with my usage of Kagi's search engine. I love how I can customize the engine to do exactly what I want.

Biggest problem I see with Kagi is, most people I know don't care about privacy and couldn't imagine spending $ per month for search engine results even if they get better results.

It is growing - albeit slowly because it prioritizes privacy: https://kagi.com/stats

Member Count:

(I am not paid (or given anything) by Kagi, just a happy customer).

 

[Skyscraperfan]

Orion? That is shop for adult toys.

 

[Ethosik]

Why do people care about vertical tabs all of a sudden? Omni web had those years ago and it was a fun novelty but I changed back quickly

Because even at 10 tabs with a 4k display you cannot read the full name of the tab? Vertical tabs I have infinite space to scroll and see full text of the tab I want.

 

[orderoftheditch]

Regardless, it’s good and very important to have multiple web engines out there. If Google controls that, they’ll abuse it

Apple doesn’t let multiple web engines run on iOS do they? Literally everything on iOS is WebKit.
They deliberately cripple WebKit and slowly add new features to protect the App Store monopoly.
Firefox have an alternative engine but despite not being a $4tn corporation do not hold back the web in the way Safari does.
I run Apple everything but this is my single biggest gripe about them as a company.
Chromium has already been ported to iOS but Apple refuses to let it be distributed through the App Store, removing real browser competition on their devices.

 

[Alvinc]

Want to use it because it supports macOS 10.14 and plans to even 10.13 so I can expect my MacBook Air can have a few more years of updated browser.

On iOS/iPadOS, there are some UI issues, like buttons on the top left are squeezed in small windows, and the design of the address bar when typing is so ugly, although they want to make it like Safari or Apple like UI.

The left browser on the left of the image is Safari, compared to the right which is Orion.

 

[maxoakland]

Apple doesn’t let multiple web engines run on iOS do they? Literally everything on iOS is WebKit.
They deliberately cripple WebKit and slowly add new features to protect the App Store monopoly.
Firefox have an alternative engine but despite not being a $4tn corporation do not hold back the web in the way Safari does.
I run Apple everything but this is my single biggest gripe about them as a company.
Chromium has already been ported to iOS but Apple refuses to let it be distributed through the App Store, removing real browser competition on their devices.

That’s an interesting one. In some ways Apple’s insane refusal to allow different web engines on iOS might actually be good for the web since it forces diversity

 

[Pooneil]

Orion Browser is just okey but I would never make it my default browser or pay money money for a subscription. I tried setting up an account with Kagi search and was never able to do it. The browser market for Mac OS is pretty crowded already. The fact that Orion is built on Web Kit is both good and bad. Actually, I withhold judgement and play with it some more. I was able to install all of the third party extensions. The hassle of trying to make an account with Kagi was something that I didn't want to waste time on this morning. The subscription prices are pretty steep for Orion Plus. This remlnds me a bit of the old days of Opera which was a purchase I believe and it never caught on and couldn't compete with Internet Explorer and broke a lot of web sites. I wish the Orion effort well.

 

[walterpaisley]

Orion Browser is just okey but I would never make it my default browser or pay money money for a subscription. I tried setting up an account with Kagi search and was never able to do it. The browser market for Mac OS is pretty crowded already. The fact that Orion is built on Web Kit is both good and bad. Actually, I withhold judgement and play with it some more. I was able to install all of the third party extensions. The hassle of trying to make an account with Kagi was something that I didn't want to waste time on this morning. The subscription prices are pretty steep for Orion Plus. This remlnds me a bit of the old days of Opera which was a purchase I believe and it never caught on and couldn't compete with Internet Explorer and broke a lot of web sites. I wish the Orion effort well.

I should create a snippet for this: Orion is 100% free. The badly-named Orion+ is a "support the project" thing and not related to features or using Orion whatsoever.

 

[Pooneil]

I should create a snippet for this: Orion is 100% free. The badly-named Orion+ is a "support the project" thing and not related to features or using Orion whatsoever.

Thanks for the clarification. As it turned out I did make an account with Kagi. It was Keeper that wouldn’t cooperate.

 

[lowendlinux]

I installed it the other day it's fast enough faster than FF but slower than Safari I look forward to seeing how the browser progresses

 

[artifex]

It’s amazing that Google has destroyed their product so throughly that Kagi can compete. I remember when people thought it was impossible because Google had such a lead and so many servers to dedicate

I’m gonna subscribe to Kagi one of these days

I stopped trusting Google much way back when they started putting ads at the top of search results with teeny little yellow "ad" markings that were hard to see, so when I'd tell someone over the phone to download the latest update for something by using specific search keywords, they were clicking sites that were serving adware-infested installers instead of the official sites.

 

[judgeFire]

Does this browser support vertical tabs?

 

[MacBH928]

And why should anyone blindly trust Kagi? Can you name any audits that have been done on their software?

A lot of their website doesn't even work but, the part hocking the paid plans does.

I see a lot of people on here blindly jumping in the pool just so they can use extensions and have a fast browser. I don't necessarily see that as wise, especially when Kagi's all gives viewers of their website a few vague sentences with what appears to be a promise with no verified backing outside of their word.

You are correct, its more on which brand you trust kind of like how you trust a bank with your money.

Not sure what you main hocking paid plans because Orion is completely free and the paid tiers are basically donations that gives icon exchange perks.

It is nice to be able to skip the baked in search engines apple provides, and stick wholely with Kagi search. Reason enough for me to use Orion in itself.

all browsers allow you to choose any search engine as default except safari. i use kagi on brave and firefox no problem

 

[MacBH928]

I've been using Orion in tandem with Kagi for about six months now, and I have to say they make a really great pair.

Orion is fast, has the perk of gaining access to the Chrome Extension Store, and easily meets all of my daily browsing needs. The Mac app also pairs seamlessly with the mobile app, I know that has come to be expected, but it works well and deserves the recognition regardless.

Kagi is a very refreshing search engine experience, the quality of results are dramatically better than Google in 9/10 situations (it sometimes struggles with local inquiries like restaurants). Low value AI responses are not shoved in your face, you aren't bombarded with ads, etc.

Being the customer and paying a monthly subscription is far more appealing to me than using a free service that comes at the expense of becoming the product and having my data harvested.

It’s amazing that Google has destroyed their product so throughly that Kagi can compete. I remember when people thought it was impossible because Google had such a lead and so many servers to dedicate

I’m gonna subscribe to Kagi one of these days

The Orion speed is bs (just as far as others), what it is , is a light weight browser very very similar to safari. Its key advantage is it supports some 3rd party extensions and it doesnt work all that well. It might be great browser in 3 years but not today and it has its glitches. If you want a light weight browser there are options:
Min , Helium, Librefox

Kagi search IF YOU ARE A POWER USER is definitely worth it, its like The Economist compared to The DailyMail, the no ads , no sponsored, no ai slop + customizing (yes you can do that) your search results page on how it looks, colors, and what shows on it is definitely a super plus and its the only search services that allows you to do this.

The subscription that bundles multiple AI models in are also a great addition then you have the summerizer and the translator and more!

 

[maxoakland]

The Orion speed is bs (just as far as others), what it is , is a light weight browser very very similar to safari. Its key advantage is it supports some 3rd party extensions and it doesnt work all that well. It might be great browser in 3 years but not today and it has its glitches. If you want a light weight browser there are options:
Min , Helium, Librefox

I’ve been using Orion and my experience is exactly the opposite of what you reported

I’ve had great support of extensions, very few glitches, and it’s slow as molasses when I have too many tabs open

Kagi search IF YOU ARE A POWER USER is definitely worth it, its like The Economist compared to The DailyMail, the no ads , no sponsored, no ai slop + customizing (yes you can do that) your search results page on how it looks, colors, and what shows on it is definitely a super plus and its the only search services that allows you to do this.

Even if you’re not a power user you benefit from not having ads and tracking. Plus Google has gotten so bad you benefit by funding some competition on the market