[HN Gopher] Orion Browser
___________________________________________________________________
Orion Browser
Author : gtirloni
Score : 96 points
Date : 2025-07-31 14:11 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kagi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kagi.com)
| johnhamlin wrote:
| But does it have vertical tabs?
| WA9ACE wrote:
| Yes
| solarkraft wrote:
| It does, even trees!
| johanyc wrote:
| Are there other browsers that use tree tabs
| throwup238 wrote:
| I 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!
| herrherrmann wrote:
| I'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!
| gejose wrote:
| This 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.
| yzydserd wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Same 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Installed on my iPhone. I will give it a test drive. Safari is
| awful.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| What's wrong with Safari?
| eviks wrote:
| Lack of UI customization and bad extension support
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| Safari is unusable on iOS: no ad blocking.
|
| Orion bring uBlock origin, this is game changing
| isUserAMonkey wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Why 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 wrote:
| Once 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 wrote:
| If 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
| roughly wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Kagi offers Orion+ for those who want to support the browser
| development specifically.
| PcChip wrote:
| 100% agree with every word you said
| the_snooze wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| One 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.
| eknkc wrote:
| Yeah. That's one reason I stopped using Kagi. Its not their
| fault but it is what it is.
| raffael_de wrote:
| I've great news - you can use Firefox on iOS and set Kagi
| as the search engine!
| freediver wrote:
| Or better yet - Orion!
| autoexec wrote:
| That seems wild to me, but admittedly I don't search from
| the address bar at all. Is setting your preferred search
| engine as your homepage and opening a new tab to search
| really such a huge burden?
| eknkc wrote:
| Yes. I do not tend to launch new tabs. I almost always
| use a single tab for browsing. Only when I need to keep
| something around then I launch a new tab to preserve the
| old one.
|
| That means the address bar is my main interaction with
| the browser.
| wiether wrote:
| I don't remember the last time I used Safari on iOS, but
| once I started using Kagi, I was naturally drawn to Orion
| and that's been the best browser experienced I ever had on
| mobile.
|
| The included ad-blocker being a big factor in the great UX.
| dewey wrote:
| I really hate that you can't set the default search engine
| easily like in other browsers, or that you can at least
| easily submit your company to be included in the defaults.
|
| But with the Kagi extension all my searches are always
| redirected to Kagi on both Safari on iOS and Safari on macOS
| so I don't really see this as a real blocker as a user.
|
| I understand that this is an onboarding problem, but for a
| technical user that's really not something preventing me from
| using Kagi (Like the other comment mentions).
| nunez wrote:
| That and Apple anti-competitively preventing non-Safari
| browsers from using Safari extensions, despite all iOS
| browsers being essentially Safari under the hood.
| niam wrote:
| Kagi and Orion both entered public beta at the same time[1].
| Even if they didn't: it kind of seems unfair to indict this as
| an additional ambition. It's not as though browsers and search
| engines have an exotic relationship, and there's pertinent
| strategic threats that operating a browser protects against.
|
| [1]: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-orion-public-beta
| freediver wrote:
| Kagi founder here. I like simplicity too, but if that is the
| only thing I cared about I would have never attempted to build
| a paid search engine.
|
| We started working on the browser before we started working on
| search. There were many browsers and search engines before us,
| and all of them failed because you can not compete with an
| ecosystem company (Google) with a single product. If your
| customers use your search engine, but then use Gmail and
| Chrome, your main competitor has means (friction) with them to
| attempt to win them back over (and you are paid, they are
| free!) if you ever become more than a nuisance.
|
| This is why it was clear to me from day one that we need to
| offer a hollistic replacement for big tech for consuming the
| web - and search, browser and email (yes, we are building that
| too) account for 99% of consumption of the web.
|
| Yes, it makes our job everything but simple, but without it we
| will not survive long term - I am 100% sure. (and in the
| meantime generative AI showed up and made things even more
| complicated)
|
| I still love my job and the challenges it brings, every single
| day. While we live as a company in a complex environment we try
| to remove the complexity for our customers and make high
| quality products. I have pretty high standards for browsers and
| have been using them for almost 30 years - and Orion is by far
| the most powerful option on the market
| (speed/energy/privacy/features). Inviting you to give it a try.
| roughly wrote:
| I think it depends on what you're trying to do, and I also
| think the landscape is different right now than it would have
| been 5 years ago.
|
| I'd actually view the browser as a more difficult market to
| crack than search, because there are plenty of decent free
| options that have not obviously succumbed to the lure of
| advertising revenue yet. You're also always playing a "red
| queen's race" with the browser market where that friction you
| mention with Gmail and other google properties can be used to
| push people away from your browser. Similarly, for email,
| Fastmail and Proton are both fine answers for what to do
| without Google, and both cover a wide enough spread of the
| market that I'm not really looking for alternatives (and,
| relatedly, running an email service _sucks_ - if you haven't
| hired someone with large-scale public email service
| experience yet, you absolutely need to do so, because it's
| one of the worst problems on the internet).
|
| The search market is different - you are, to the best of my
| knowledge, the only actual paid search engine out there,
| which means you're the only one whose interests align with
| mine and the only one who can pursue a product strategy of
| actually delivering the best available information to me.
|
| This is part of why I'm concerned about dilution of focus -
| as a dedicated Kagi subscriber, the reason I'm here is
| because you offer good search aligned with my interests, and
| that's why I'm going to keep paying you money. The additional
| products in the pipeline weren't requirements to get or keep
| my business, and I suspect it's the same for many of your
| subscribers. I trust you to run your business - you've
| created a great product that I'm happy to pay for, so you've
| earned that - but please make sure you keep the search
| product top of mind and make sure that's a sustainable
| business.
| freediver wrote:
| > but please make sure you keep the search product top of
| mind and make sure that's a sustainable business.
|
| Having best web search in the world has been our
| bread&butter from day one. This is what so many people pay
| us for!
|
| Great search becomes even more important in the age of
| agents - model quality is converging to the same spot
| across frontier models and what will make great answers
| different from mediocre ones is the quality of search fed
| to them. We are currently testing v2 of our Search API with
| select partners and plan to make this generally available
| soon.
|
| We 100% intend to continue to dominate this and we heavilly
| invest and innovate in search quality space. A major
| announcement soon.
| kurtis_reed wrote:
| Do many Kagi customers use Orion? Are you having trouble
| retaining ones who don't?
|
| > I am 100% sure
|
| I'm definitely less than 100% sure. (I'd take a bet at those
| odds.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43982643
| freediver wrote:
| Many customers do, and in fact Orion feedback forum [1] is
| more active than Kagi feedback forum [2] (we do not have
| any telemetry and all product input is given directly by
| our users).
|
| While Kagi has "only" about 50k customers, Orion was
| downloaded more than a million times last year and
| continues to be a major distribution channel and entry
| point for the Kagi eco-sytem. (you are not seeing any ads
| for Kagi right? Our products are our "ads", that is how we
| grow + wonderful user community)
|
| And while you can use Kagi in any browser, it is a really
| nice experience when you use Orion (and it will get only
| better as we build more integrations). We are also aware
| about cross-platform users - which is why we are also
| developing Orion for Linux as the next platform, with more
| to come.
|
| Not sure what point you wanted to make by linking to the
| comment - happy to address it after clarification.
|
| [1] https://orionfeedback.org
|
| [2] https://kagifeedback.org
| awill wrote:
| How do you plan to solve sync (bookmarks, history etc..)
| when going cross platform? iCloud makes things easy when
| it's just Mac/iOS, but that won't work for Linux.
|
| I use Linux at home, Mac at work, and have an iPhone, and
| very few apps look native and work seamlessly across all
| 3.
| freediver wrote:
| Orion is native on 2/3 and will soon be native on Linux
| too!
| hypotrochoid wrote:
| I'm personally a Kagi early adopter and Protonmail user for
| all other standard GSuite product replacements. I find this
| arrangement perfectly smooth and painless, and never once
| wished that the services that I get from Proton in any way
| interacted with the service I get from Kagi. It's not clear
| to me at all that duplicating the google product spread would
| be the best way to extend the value to customers of Kagi
| search.
| freediver wrote:
| One use case:
|
| I would like to be able to see my emails appear in search
| results when relevant. Also would like to be able to quikly
| search the web when writing emails. This is not rocket
| science but for this you need deep integration between
| email and search. For some reason Google didn't do this in
| 20 years although perfectly capable of.
| OldfieldFund wrote:
| This is very specific. Why would you want that? Can you
| give me an example?
| zamalek wrote:
| You indicate wide extension compatibility. This is more of a
| thought experiment (by virtue of inbuilt adblocking), does -
| or do you hope/plan for - the likes of uBlock Origin work.
| freediver wrote:
| On macOS yes, on iOS limited by what iOS lets us do (we'll
| push it to the max)
| barrell wrote:
| Kagi and Orion user here. I love them both. Would love a Kagi
| mail. Thanks for building such amazing products.
|
| Although I have to be honest - even as a very devoted and
| technical user, I still have no idea what or why assistant
| is.
|
| Luckily it doesn't take away from everything else you've
| built.
| eviks wrote:
| > I have zero additional product wants or needs,
|
| > I'd really like all of this manic product energy to be going
| towards the core product
|
| What would that energy do if you don't need anything???
| robk wrote:
| the drug dealer analogy hits so hard. Bravo.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Kagi announced in March that the Linux desktop version is under
| development:
|
| https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/03/kag-orion-web-browser-co...
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/kagi.com/post/3ljqsgjmkpk2n
|
| You can signup to get notified at
| https://forms.kagi.com/?q=orion_linux_news
| samcat116 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| On 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 wrote:
| I use it on my macbook, It's great.
| jamesgasek wrote:
| Monthly orion hacker news post ahha
| guywithahat wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| That 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.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Apple 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
| baal80spam wrote:
| > Brave is a crypto company
|
| Then it's doing an awful job because it allows the user to
| disable everything related to crypto in 3 clicks, to never see
| it again.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Safari wont let you easily set kagi as default search. Seems
| like something a major browser should allow.
| The_Rob wrote:
| The Kagi Search extension works perfectly well.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Only on MacOS and iOS...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Bits 0x02: switching to Orion as a browser_ -
| 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 - March 2025 (226
| comments)
|
| _Orion Browser by Kagi: Lightweight, WebKit Based_ -
| 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 - Jan
| 2025 (160 comments)
|
| _Orion Browser by Kagi_ -
| 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 -
| Oct 2023 (3 comments)
|
| _Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta_ -
| 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 - March 2022 (149
| comments)
|
| _Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049 - Oct 2021 (184
| comments)
| eviks wrote:
| is 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?
| als0 wrote:
| Can 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.
| nickdichev wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| This has been resolved by macOS Sequoia - now works out of box
| in Orion.
| nickdichev wrote:
| Nice, thanks for letting me know. I'll give Orion another
| shot!
| stranded22 wrote:
| Just wish there was a windows version too. I want my browser
| bookmarks / experience to be shared across windows, iPad and
| iPhone.
| nunez wrote:
| So 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 wrote:
| I use Orion as my daily driver on my Mac. The bugginess has
| largely passed.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| that is my experience too. Whole days now pass without
| touching another browser on the machine or the phone.
| daveidol wrote:
| Even with Chrome extensions?
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| 1st 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| lol, 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 wrote:
| Orion is my way to have ublock origin on iphone/ipad.
|
| Is there another way?
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