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Orion Browser
- johnhamlin 1y agoBut does it have vertical tabs?
- WA9ACE 1y agoYes
- solarkraft 1y agoIt does, even trees!
- johanyc 1y agoAre there other browsers that use tree tabs
- throwup238 1y agoI love Kagi and I’ve been using the Orion browser on iOS for months because it support uBlock Origin but its bugginess is emblematic of Kagi stretching its resources way too thin (and the tshirt thing…) The iOS browser is buggy as all hell: the jump to top click around the notch stops working regularly, reflow/layout breaks throwing all the buttons and url input off screen, the entire page just go blank if it’s too long (like an HN post with 1k+ comments) necessitating a switch to Safari, and on and on. I have to restart Orion multiple times a day and switch to Safari on a regular basis. I just had to do it right now because the “Add Comment” button didn’t work! That said, I will continue to be an ultimate subscriber because their search engine feels feature complete. Although I appreciate the small features they’re adding like the @ symbol to go along with bangs, as long as that core product doesn’t get enshittified I’m happy. The Kagi team is doing great work!
- gejose 1y agoThis was also my experience when I last tried around 4 months ago. I ran into a lot of bugs and often found myself opening sites in safari instead. I hope it's improved now.
- herrherrmann 1y agoI’m surprised to hear about the bugs. I’ve been using Orion on iOS very happily for a week or so now, and haven’t encountered any issues. I’m actually close to writing a praising blog post for it!
- yzydserd 1y agoI’ve been using Orion as my daily driver on iOS for a year. I’ve never encountered these bugs. It’s possible I’m just not sensitive to them.
- gtirloni 1y agoSame here. I noticed the macOS build has its quirks and crashes frequently (but it's beta/RC so...). But on iOS I never faced any issues that I can remember now.
- n8cpdx 1y agoI have many of these same issues. I actually think ublock is causing some of them; removing and reinstalling fixed some of the hangs for a while, but they eventually came back. I think I also switched from Firefox to chrome version or vice versa. The general “chrome” of the app is unfortunately a buggy mess regardless of extension config. I still think it’s easily worth it because for some critical sites it adds so much value. I just accept I’ll have to force quit a few times a day. Also, PSA, extensions don’t automatically update on desktop.
- weikju 1y ago> Also, PSA, extensions don’t automatically update on desktop. I see an "automatic updates" checkbox now in the extensions management window
- SoftTalker 1y agoInstalled on my iPhone. I will give it a test drive. Safari is awful.
- LeoPanthera 1y agoWhat's wrong with Safari?
- eviks 1y agoLack of UI customization and bad extension support
- SoftTalker 1y agoAnd no ad block, you need additional apps for that. Ad blocking should be a basic feature in a browser in 2025. Apple talks a good game on "no tracking" but they don't block the ads, and I don't understand why not. The current ad-based revenue model of the web should be completely impossible, that would get rid of entire swathes of useless SEO sites and the harmful psychological games that Facebook and others play to keep you engaged so they can keep showing you more and more ads.
- joak 1y agoSafari is unusable on iOS: no ad blocking. Orion bring uBlock origin, this is game changing
- isUserAMonkey 1y agoI switched to Orion on my iPhone about a month ago from a recommendation on HN. I’m a happy user, no real issues encountered. The biggest annoyance I had with Safari were sites that would autoplay videos with sound.
- catlikesshrimp 1y agoWhy is going open source more difficult than not? isn't it enough to make sure all the code is legal and dump it as is? The community might even help cleaning it. Documentation might or could come at some point in the future.
- gtirloni 1y agoOnce it's fully open source, there are certain expectations and a lot of overhead involved in maintaining the community, governance, etc. I can understand if they delay it while they are still figuring out the initial vision and want to stay focused. There are many examples of open source maintainers burning out due to that overhead, and it seems Kagi might be stretched too thin right now.
- eviks 1y agoIf it's not fully open source, there are certain expectaions of fully open sourcing it. Just like they continue to ignore them, they can ignore the ones you mentioned and do not do any community/governance etc. No focus lost. Also, those many examples burning out are of unpaid individuals, not commercial companies
- xigoi 1y agoOpen source does nat mean that you have to accept contributions. Look at SQLite.
- roughly 1y agoI really like Kagi, but I'm starting to get that same sense of anticipatory melancholy I used to get when I found a really good drug dealer back in the day - this product or service is fantastic, and I'm very happy to be able to give it money, but I recognize this is a short term affair and some day I'll be back to having to search for it again. I would continue to pay Kagi $10 a month forever for exactly the product I signed up for - I have zero additional product wants or needs, zero additional ambitions for the service, zero things I'd like my money to be going to other than sustaining a high-quality service that solves a need for me. I don't need or want the AI features, I sure don't need a browser, and I'd really like all of this manic product energy to be going towards the core product so I can continue to enjoy it for the foreseeable future.
- gtirloni 1y agoKagi offers Orion+ for those who want to support the browser development specifically.
- PcChip 1y ago100% agree with every word you said
- the_snooze 1y agoI went through the same thing with Dropbox. I loved how simple it was initially: just a folder that syncs. Then they started adding all sorts of "enterprise" and "family" features that cluttered up the simple use case it satisfied just fine for me. I understand that businesses need to expand and innovate. But it sure is nice to have a rock-solid reliable tool that just works long-term; something that you can depend on without it suddenly morphing into a weird new thing after you've built up skills and processes around it.
- bryan0 1y agoOne of the extremely stupid reasons kagi needs to develop a browser is because ios safari prevents setting kagi as the default search engine, so they have to do some terrible hacks to get it to kind of work.
- captn3m0 1y agoKagi announced in March that the Linux desktop version is under development: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/03/kag-orion-web-browser-coming-to-linux https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/03/kag-orion-web-browser-co... https://bsky.app/profile/kagi.com/post/3ljqsgjmkpk2n https://bsky.app/profile/kagi.com/post/3ljqsgjmkpk2n You can signup to get notified at https://forms.kagi.com/?q=orion_linux_news https://forms.kagi.com/?q=orion_linux_news
- samcat116 1y agoI was using Orion for a while, but it was so hopelessly buggy that I had to go back to Arc. Hope that changes in the future.
- orbsa 1y agoI've been a Kagi subscriber for over a year now because I love the product and think they do a great job working on it and improving it. That being said, I've tried using Orion on my Macbook Pro and it always seems to get full of memory leaks. Freezing at times and making it troublesome to use the developer tools. I prefer Zen browser currently and don't see myself switching until Ladybird is stable
- drcongo 1y agoI'm an Orion+ paid user though I still don't use it for my daily driver. there's still a long way to go, especially around password manager integrations - iCloud passwords is pretty much unusable and 1Password is extremely flaky (though 1Password is a thoroughbred shitshow these days so probably not Kagi's fault). I pay for it because I hope it succeeds and because I love Kagi search. Posted from Orion RC.
- kstrauser 1y agoOn that detour, I’ve given up on 1Password for personal use and switched entirely to Apple’s Passwords. 1P was one of the first Mac apps I bought way back when and I’d been a huge proponent for many years. The current version’s an Electronic disaster though. It seems like I had to reconnect the browser plugin at least once a week and it just plain failed to autofill way too often. Even the Passwords plugin for Chrome is more reliable than 1P now, let alone on Safari where the integration is pretty much perfect IMO. Sigh. I really liked 1P, but they’re walking a road I don’t want to follow.
- josephd79 1y agoI use it on my macbook, It's great.
- guywithahat 1y agoIt's interesting that they chose HN as the picture on their homepage; it makes you wonder how much of the company is supported by HN users. Is this site big enough to support a subscription based company that frequently advertises here?
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoIt almost feels like a really clever landing page -- if you click the link from hacker news, it shows you a tailored experience that you'd be familiar with. But looking at the link, I see no parameters that would result in that kind of landing page customization. Also it seems contrary to Kagi's spirit to do that sort of thing.
- freediver 1y agoThat landing page is 5? years old. Most of Kagi/Orion users in the early days came from HN (and still do). I am a passionate HN user and I took that screenshot personally.
- jamesgasek 1y agoMonthly orion hacker news post ahha
- als0 1y agoCan anyone comment on how fast it is on macOS compared to Safari or Brave? On browserbench speedometer I'm getting 29.3 on Orion and 7.70 on Safari. I'd appreciate more comparisons.
- gtirloni 1y agomacOS 15.6 / M4 Max Orion (0.99.135.0.1-beta) - 22.8 Orion RC (0.99.135.0.1-rc) - 22.6 Firefox 141.0 - 30.7 Chrome (138.0.7204.184) - 36.7 Safari (18.6)- 41.6 Orion feels as snappy as Safari though, even as a beta. Firefox feels like the slowest here :shrug:
- LeoPanthera 1y agoI guess Safari is the only major browser left that is just a browser. Google is an ad company. Microsoft is an ad company. Mozilla is an ad company. Brave is a crypto company. And these next wave of browsers are all going to be infested with AI, I suppose. Apple sells phones.
- autoexec 1y agoApple takes huge amounts of cash in exchange for making a search engine their default and they go out of their way to stop users from removing search engines or adding their own. Those apple sanctioned search engines are effectively paid ads, and apple users end up getting sold to those other ad companies with no option to use anyone else as their default. The last good browser is Lynx
- cout 1y agoWhy lynx and not w3m or links?
- autoexec 1y agoAre those still active? Elinks is I think. I'll have to grab the latest version of w3m
- flushedpancake 1y agow3m hasn't been updated since 2023, and the author hasn't even had any activity on GitHub since July of that year, either, it seems - which given he's had at least 3 contributions a year since 2010 and then just suddenly dropped off the face of the earth, is pretty concerning to say the least.
- rkta 1y agoThere is an maintained (by me) fork at https://w3m-pager.org https://w3m-pager.org
- 1y ago
- shkkmo 1y agoOnly on MacOS and iOS...
- weikju 1y agoAnd soon, Linux
- dang 1y agoRelated: Bits 0x02: switching to Orion as a browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44681616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44681616 - July 2025 (28 comments) Kagi Is Bringing Orion Web Browser to Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43302073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43302073 - March 2025 (226 comments) Orion Browser by Kagi: Lightweight, WebKit Based - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203394 - Feb 2025 (3 comments) A three month review of kagi search and the orion web browser (2024) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42652125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42652125 - Jan 2025 (160 comments) Orion Browser by Kagi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38441139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38441139 - Nov 2023 (188 comments) Orion Browser 0.99.126.1 Release Notes: Orion+ Lifetime License Now Available - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38088208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38088208 - Oct 2023 (3 comments) Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31584791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31584791 - June 2022 (201 comments) My next main browser: a review of Orion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30610651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30610651 - March 2022 (149 comments) Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049 - Oct 2021 (184 comments)
- eviks 1y agois there any idea when they're going to have the full ~99% API support for extensions as currently a lot of extensions don't work properly?
- nickdichev 1y agoI've used it previously and echo the other sentiments here about some bugs being blockers, but overall enjoyed the experience. Ultimately though, unless they get access to the APIs to auto-fill OTP codes from messages/email, I'm unlikely to switch from Safari
- freediver 1y agoThis has been resolved by macOS Sequoia - now works out of box in Orion.
- nickdichev 1y agoNice, thanks for letting me know. I'll give Orion another shot!
- stranded22 1y agoJust wish there was a windows version too. I want my browser bookmarks / experience to be shared across windows, iPad and iPhone.
- nunez 1y agoSo I hate Safari with a burning passion and Firefox on iOS isn't much better. Ideally I'd run FF everywhere, but lacking Apple Pay support and iOS anti-competitively locking out extensions to non-Safari browsers make this a non-starter. I VERY BADLY want to make this my daily driver across all of my devices, but between weird rendering bugs (which are decreasing), janky 1Pass support (which is improving), lacking history sync and the inability to run multiple instances like I can with Firefox*, it has been difficult to make the switch. I know that Vlad and team are working hard to quash the bugs, so I'll keep trying the betas every once in a while. *: I know that Safari and Orion have profiles. I prefer to isolate my browsers at a process level, i.e. a separate browser process for work and personal stuff. FF can mostly achieve this with Containers, which I used with the Multi-use Containers extension to create containers based on URL, but things gets weird with intermediate URLs. Safari cannot do this. Orion theoretically can, but I don't think it does right now.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoI use Orion as my daily driver on my Mac. The bugginess has largely passed.
- mediumsmart 1y agothat is my experience too. Whole days now pass without touching another browser on the machine or the phone.
- daveidol 1y agoEven with Chrome extensions?
- nunez 1y agoTime to try it again!
- pinkmuffinere 1y agoI love brave's native ad blocking, so the idea of _even MOAR_ ad blocking appeals to me. But what is the distinction between "1st party ads" vs 3rd party? I'm a noob in this arena, so I'd need an example. other notes: - Love the discussion of features instead of vibes - Even though I don't understand the comparison table, I appreciate the attempt at quick summary. - I'm not even a fan of Kagi, if anything I'm mildy opposed. But "a browser with less ads / more privacy" may legitimately win me over.
- freediver 1y ago1st party ads - 'hosted' on the website itself 3rd party asd - 'hosted' on third party sites Orion blocks both by default (Kagi's whole game is anti ad-tech), Brave just 3rd party ads by default.
- zamalek 1y agoI'm guessing that the likes of daring fireballs ads wouldn't be blocked - they originate from the server hosting the website. Google ads and such would be blocked, because they don't originate on the site. I can see the theory. First-party ads should (but very much could not) be more privacy friendly. Tracking the user becomes difficult because you need to convince people to add your tracking coda to their website without incentives like Ad payments. So you most likely have to tune ads to what is displayed on the page, ultimately making the page and the user's attention products (which is strictly superior to the entirety of the user being the only product).
- pinkmuffinere 1y agolol, at first this comment confused me because I googled Daring Fireballs, and I saw no ads (ublock origin doing a really good job here). Opening on Brave though, I do indeed see the ads. Thanks for the clarifying example.
- joak 1y agoOrion is my way to have ublock origin on iphone/ipad. Is there another way?
- sunnybeetroot 1y agoI see a picture of what looks like ublock origin, the non lite version. Does that mean Orion will continue to support manifest V2 to allow ublock origin to exist?
- xacky 1y agoTried it, it suffers the same space in url bug that Mobile Firefox has, and they only are interested in bug reports from people who pay $150 for their Webkit skin.