Is that true? Maybe it is and I'm out of the loop but I can't remember the last time someone complained about browser speed. The bottleneck seems to be website bloat more than anything else. Would love to see this argument quantified.
We just don’t know how bad slow browsers can be because all others have caught up.
During that time IE startup time went from a dozen or so seconds to also instantaneous. It was even faster than chrome sometimes. But that was just the startup. The application wasn’t ready to accept any user input or load anything for another 10 or 15 seconds still. Sometimes it would even accept input for a second then block the input fields again.
It’s the same mentality all those insanely slow webapps do when they think some core react feature for a “initial render” or splash screen etc will save them from their horrific engineering practices.
A system with less than 64 Megabytes of RAM (most computers of the time) would have to lean heavily on spinning rust virtual memory, making everything slow.
However, since then Chrome has become one of the biggest memory hogs that people commonly run.
Remember that users often don’t correctly figure out which part of the stack is causing something. I’m guessing people generally don’t ID the browser as the performance bottleneck unless they’re familiar with browsers of significantly differing speed, and when not it comes out as asking for faster internet, faster websites, or a faster computer, all of which we hear constantly.
So performance is general is more like it... that includes not hurting my battery life.
Also as a dev Safari is becoming the new IE. I've had a whole suite of Safari-only bugs in the past 2yrs and lots of browser crash reports from users.
Now I think I'll just keep switching until there's one decent browser left which hasn't been AIed.
(Safari with adblocker, of course.)
Orion is faster than Safari on the same Mac. And it isn't rendering speed, but basic UI interface, multi-tabs usage. It is annoying because you see what Webkit is capable of and somehow Apple is not doing such as great job for Mac Safari. The difference is especially true on x86 Mac.
That’s how often I find myself having to do something in a web app that only supports Chrome. Meet the new IE, same as the old IE…
It used to be slow for me, but now on the same hardware it is fast enough that I don't see any difference compared to chrome.
1Password extension disabled: 17
1Password extension enabled: 10 (and the test takes much longer)
Vivaldi with extension enabled: 25
I really, really want to move back to Orion as my daily driver but as a pretty heavy 1Password user this is absolutely a dealbreaker.
I wish browsers offered some kind of autofill extension API so password managers don't have to inject their own bullshit into every page.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/authenticationserv...
Then again 1Password itself is problematic, from old bugs to the slowness of it all. I also dislike how their overlay thingie gets on top of everything, even form fields that make no sense. It's a bit pricey for the decrease in quality over time.
I did file bugs for issues I came across, and I'll try it again if I hear this is addressed.
There's a lot of different reasons that people ask for open sourcing of Orion / software in general; could I ask you to expand a bit more as to which issues being open source would address for you?
I can assume of course, but I'd rather listen to you articulate it, even if it's usual reasons.
Y’all seem like nice people but trust isn’t automatic these days.
tl;dr: I'm a tinkerer, an idealist, and someone who wants to retain control over my digital life and deny influence over it to the likes of Google, Apple, Meta, et al. at pretty much all costs, and there are absolutely good enough open source options that I couldn't bring myself to use a proprietary browser unless I absolutely have to.
To elaborate…
First off, there are a few reasons I always prefer to use open source software:
- I like being able to open things up, see how they work, chops bits off them, attach other things too them, use them in unexpected ways and general use (and abuse) them however I see fit. After all, I can do that with all the physical stuff I own, so why not the digital stuff too…?
- Code costs nothing to copy and is trivial to copy perfectly. This means that the potential compounding benefits of everyone sharing not only their complete software products but individual libraries, algorithms, and solutions to common (and not-so-common) problems are huge. When we use and contribute to open source software we help build those benefits for everyone.
- Closed source code is always open to being abandoned or moving in a direction we don't care for with nothing we can do about it. When it's open source, the question is "will I submit a PR", or "will I maintain a fork" (even if just for me). When it's closed, the question is "will I build a replacement". These are not the same category of thing! I can start running a fork any time[0]. Building a replacement may take months or years, if it's even feasible. But there are individuals who run their own fork of my favourite text editor (Helix).
- I'm a big believer in the value of communities and efforts made primarily for the benefit of one's community rather than financial gain. Open source can act as a kind of insurance against the latter.
Secondly, I think this is all uniquely important for browsers because the web is so dominant and it's therefore so important to me (and I think to Kagi's mission) to protect that platform for everyone, for all time. Even though Chromium and Webkit are open source, Google and Apple exert huge influence and control through their ownership of Chrome and Safari. Firefox is better but even that project is not free of Google's influence, which is steadily making the web worse for everyone.
Kagi probably won't be the next Google, in that respect. As a long time payed user of Kagi[1], I really do believe they want to build a good browser that does not abuse an exploit it's users. But Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil", and many of us believed that for a while too. My point is not that Kagi will or is likely to become evil, it's that when Firefox/Zen, ungoogled Chromium, and maybe one day Ladybird and others exist, *I can't invest time, effort, and attention into something that could in theory go down such a path without the community even retaining the option to fork it[2]. This is especially true when using a closed source browser would also simultaneously weaken those more open efforts, however slightly, by subtracting from their community.
So there you have it. I hope that's helpful.
[0] Case in point: I've used Firefox for years. Sometime last year I start using Zen (a fork/derivative of Firefox) alongside it with no drama or fanfare. Now I rarely open Firefox.
[1] Honestly, I couldn't imagine going back. It's a genuinely excellent product and I believe the company is generally doing, and certainly trying to do the right thing.
[2] Just look at the cautionary tale/disaster that is Arc/Dia. For a while I was worried I was missing out on something special. Then Zen came a long and I worried less. Then the whole Dia thing… boy am I glad I didn't invest my time in that.
Is there a way to get a useful visualization like a burndown chart out of their bug tracker? The people who have created it seem unaware that one important task of such a tracker is to reveal the big picture and help answer questions like "Is the project getting better or worse?" They should study the Github Insights tab. https://orionfeedback.org/
The truth is, Orion being based off of WebKit comes with the obvious limitation that....it's based off of WebKit! So much slower than chrome or firefox, and plagued with decisions that are just not to my taste. For example, just the way it behaves when I hit the back button (or, rather, when I swipe back) feels incredibly sluggish. Loading is often terrible, with constant repaints of the screen as well. A bunch of websites don't work properly either.
The only true reason why I wanted Orion to work was because I wanted a browser that would be good for my battery life and "optimized for the mac". But, since then, I've realized I don't really use the battery that much (or that I don't notice it being a problem), and that, whatever "optimized for the mac" means, it definitely isn't speed.
After Arc went around and poo-pooed on its users, I migrated to Zen (I did try Orion again, like I mentioned). Zen is also filled with bugs, but at least I don't want to throw my computer out the window because of it being slow.
It's also by far the most resource efficient, especially on Mac, though Chrome invested heavily more recently to close the gap.
Overall in terms of "feel", Safari is hands down the best browser in terms of performance.
So I’m back on Safari.
"From day one, we made the deliberate choice to build Orion on WebKit, the open‑source engine at the heart of Safari and the broader Apple ecosystem."
Chromium's Blink is based on Webkit and was for YEARS. While Blink and Webkit had some major differences now, it's not Webkit that's the better core now.
They picked Webkit because it's fast and easy, what ships on both MacOS and iOS. They couldn't put an alternative engine in the iOS and distribute it outside of Europe, so they stuck with webkit. For an Apple-only application, it's a smart choice for fast development, but it's NOT an act of resistance AT ALL. It's completely caving to Apple.
This is not a bold new choice in the browser space, it's just another privacy focused Webkit browser. That's great, but pretending this is sticking it to the man is delusional.
I'm curious about your definition of "better". It's nice that Google is catching up to Safari on Speedometer benchmarks (Blink was 20% slower a year ago), so at minimum one can appreciate Safari for being the mechanical hare that triggers Google's prey instinct. Bun chose WebKit's JavaScriptCore for performance reasons. Safari's supposedly-poor support for web standards is mostly Google propaganda.
But also, what ublock origin??? It doesn't work on iOS even if you can install it, are you not mixing it up with their internal adblocker or something else? Just checked and disabled all images, works on a desktop, fails in Orion ios, images are still visible
1. Doesn't have an established WebKit browser, which 110% sucks due to issues with testing for Mac and iOS. This is a long standing issue.
2. Relies on a Chromium-based browser with its own integrity issues, as well as a Microsoft approach to telemetry.
I don't associate Safari nearly as much to neither invasive telemetry, tracking, or ads beyond those on the web, nor poor performance on Mac. In fact, I often find it excellent especially in terms of battery life, and Safari has integrated content blocking and tracking protections. Maybe not as powerful as here (?) but telling of Apple's approach to caring for this.
Edit: I saw there's work on Windows support. That's good news. IMHO, this browser should be Windows-first. It makes far more sense there to me. But maybe you like Mac more as a platform?
Well, if you’ve seen one of those screenshots where 80% of the screen was toolbars and only a fraction left for the viewport … that’s a bit how I feel now when I look at the landscape of browsers today.
Browsers… everywhere, each one trying to grab your attention long enough so you give them clicks, cookies, “anonymised” search queries and who knows what else…
There are no more browsers that fight for the user.
Fantastic news!
My favorite feature by far is the ability to disable the stupid "hide the address bar if you're not scrolled all the way to the top of a page" behavior every mobile browser does.
On a side note - I don't know why Apple still doesn't let you set a custom search engine in Safari even today, so random.
And I still can't select multiple tabs with shift\cmd\whatever button pressed down to do something with a group of tabs instead of a single one.
And a feel no difference in speed on my M1 Pro.
For now this 1.0 feels just as beta as it was.
There was a bug[0] for this that was marked as done but I tried after the fact and it was still happening. And looking at the comments on that report suggest I am not the only one still experiencing it.
If it weren’t for that I would probably be using it as my daily browser.
[0] https://orionfeedback.org/d/324-dark-reader-has-a-slightly-d...
Excited to see where this goes!!
It says "Firefox" when I check the extensions page, so maybe that's where it manages to bring the full version from.
> Because something fundamental has been lost.
> Zero telemetry, privacy‑first access to the internet: a basic human right.
> We believe there needs to be a different path: a browser that answers only to its user.
Disable Daily Ping and Crash Reports in Firefox Focus and you too have a telemetry-free browser on iOS.
Meanwhile on macOS you have Mullvad Browser.
Besides, it doesn't seem like I'm able to install sponsorblock, ublockock origin etc on iOS firefox. I love using sponsorblock and several other add-ons from both Mazzella in chrome in Orion on my phone.
"Firefox" != "Firefox Focus"
Please do not conflate the two.
> it doesn't seem like I'm able to install sponsorblock, ublockock origin etc on iOS firefox
There are other options though. For example a DoH DNS profile pointing at DNS servers that do that for you (for example Mullvad's `adblock.dns.mullvad.net` DNS servers).
exactly what's the problem with re-inventing?
And they didn't reinvent anything, they pick an under-utilised engine. This is not yet another firefox (or chromium) fork.
Because their blog makes a big song and dance about the items I quoted above as the answer to their self-imposed question "why the heck do we need a new browser?".
They are saying "we need a new browser" because "Zero telemetry, privacy‑first access has been lost".
However the reality is that zero-telemetry has NOT been lost. It is there in Firefox Focus, Mullvad Browser and doubtless others too.
Therefore, I quite rightly am returning to their question "why the heck do we need a new browser?".
Because "there are no zero telemetry browsers" is factually incorrect as an answer to their headline question.
At the very least they should address their competitor products and why they consider themselves different. Don't just bury your head in the sand and pretend your product has no competitors.
But really they should have picked a better headline topic to base their blog on.
Asking because I’ve read the article, and I noticed extensions being mentioned a few times (including in one of the subchapter titles). However, I couldn’t find any actual info about extensions there.
To be clear, I didn't mean for my original comment to be a dig at Orion at all. I am just genuinely excited for it, but an extension ecosystem is something I value a lot in a browser. So I was a little bit miffled, when the original post namedropped extensions, but didn't provide any details beyond that.
However, thanks for clarifying the current state of affairs in terms of extensions, and I am eagerly looking forward to checking out the docs.
if it took 6 years of bug fixing to release version 1.0 I'm sure there are still innumerable bugs in orion
Currently looking to switch from Arc to Orion. The one thing I'm gonna miss is Arc's Portrait Mode.
Unless it meaningfully closes the loop on not sending data to fingerprint with, I'm not sure "zero telemetry" is really a selling point at all
Update Error!
An error occurred while parsing the update feed.
[ Cancel Update ]
Maybe it's related to PiHole? I'm on MacOS 26.1
Sorry about that; it's all fixed now, and we really hope everyone will love this browser we've been working on with pure passion for 6 years!
EDIT: not fixed yet EDIT2: fixed! Thanks for your patience
No. Update server return empty response. That why there are error.
> A bold technical choice: WebKit, not another Chromium clone
I don't find this a bold technical choice at all for a macOS only browser? I think this would be more impressive if it was Windows as well, as back (maybe ~5 or so years ago) when I was investigating WebKit on Windows, builds were not on an equal playing field[1]. So the engineering to get that up and running would be impressive.
> Speed by nature
Unfortunately, as of 16:40 UTC, I am unable to run the browser (installer?) to benchmark it due to "An error occurred while parsing the update feed.", but I recall 2 years ago when I tested Orion it was the slowest of all the browsers on macOS and Safari had quite a lead. I'd also be curious, being based on WebKit, how much faster it will actually be on macOS vs Safari?
I dropped speed as a focus point on Waterfox after compilation flags started making less of a difference compared to the actual architectural changes Mozilla were making for Firefox.
> Privacy etc
I think comparing to other major browsers such as Chrome the points are valid, but against Safari I'm not convinced it holds up as much. I know there is some telemetry related to Safari, but privacy is a big selling point for Safari as well and I'd be curious to see actual comparisons to that?
Safari includes iCloud Privacy Relay (MPR based on MASQUE[2]) and Oblivious DNS[3] - arguably two very valuable features that a company at a scale like Apple can subsidise.
The entire AI section also feels like trying to have it both ways as well. They criticise other browsers for rushing AI features, position themselves as the "secure" alternative, then immediately say they'll integrate AI "as it matures." This reads more like "we're behind on AI features" than a principled stance. If security is the concern, explain your threat model and what specific architectural decisions you're making differently? Currently Firefox has kept AI out of the "browser core" as it's been put, and I don't see them ever changing that.
Kudos that they have >2000 people paying for the browser directly, but I will say it doesn't excite me to see another closed source browser entering the market (I don't see any mention here of open-source apart from mention of WebKit being open source).
I do realise this is more a marketing post than an actual technical deep dive, but so much is just a rehash of every feature almost every modern web browser has?
I'll keep updating this comment as and when I can explore the browser itself a bit more.
[1] https://fujii.github.io/2019/07/05/webkit-on-windows/
Every JIT tier has been enabled for JSC on Windows[1], and libpas (the custom memory allocator) has been enabled.
The Windows port has moved from Cairo to Skia, though it's currently using the CPU renderer AFAIK. There's some work to enable the COORDINATED_GRAPHICS flag which would enable Windows to benefit from Igalia's ongoing work on improving the render pipeline for the Linux ports. I go into more detail on my latest update [2], though the intended audience is really other WebKit contributors.
Webkit's CI (EWS) is running the layout tests on Windows, and running more tests on Windows is mostly a matter of test pruning, bug fixes and funding additional hardware.
There's a few things still disabled on the Windows port, some rough edges, and not a lot of production use (Bun and Playwright are the main users I'm aware of). The Windows port really needs more people (and companies) pushing it forward. Hopefully Kagi will be contributing improvements to the Windows port upstream as they work on Orion for Windows.
[1] https://iangrunert.com/2024/10/07/every-jit-tier-enabled-jsc... [2] https://iangrunert.com/2025/11/06/webkit-windows-port-update...
Although, let's be honest few people look at the entire codebase. However i believe It would be beneficial to make It open-source for them so they could have contributors. Also new features would be easier to add. For example, i know some protocols like Multicast QUIC which was almost impossible to be added in Safari and Chrome.
Also, there are two features which I would like to know/see in Orion:
- I use quite a lot the Containers and Group tabs in Firefox. The containers allow me to have different active accounts in the same browser. I use it a lot when managing AWS accounts.
- Change the behaviour of Cmd+Shift+F to be the same as Firefox, doing the full screen instead of the hide the tabs.
For some reason, Orion is now getting slammed by Ad-Shield on my iPad on so many blogs and sites it’s not even funny. Endless “an error occured loading this page” blaming my ad blocker.
Anyone else?
Just because something is good does not make it a "basic human right"; why do so many people now suggest it does?
Are people really interested in those other than Search?
>A bold technical choice: WebKit, not another Chromium clone
Only real choice for iOS so not sure what the bold choice is for an Apple-centric browser.
Update Error! An error occurred while parsing the update feed.
On Linux I’ll keep to Firefox.
The only reason I didn't use it is because safari, I already paid for all the extension i need and I found safari to be better on iphone. But compared to Firefox or chrome, this is so much better.
That said, it leaves a salty taste in the mouth to see
> Orion is part of the broader Kagi ecosystem
and
> Supporters (via subscription or lifetime purchase) unlock a set of Orion+ perks
I would imagine that paying for Kagi is also a vector for having the paywalled features of your browser.
What I don't like: Seems like no way to disable two-finger back/forward gesture? I hate that one and managed to disable a similar feature in Chrome. Also either it doesn't have any kind of Developer Tools, or I couldn't find it yet in my 15min speedrun. (edit: found it)
I'm hopeful.
I discovered Orion a few years back and it has been my go-to standalone browser but never strong enough to be my primary browser.
So many daily drivers of mine refuse(d) to work from time to time (1P, Netflix, Youtube, Slack, Gmaps, Hey & the list goes on). I eventually started relying on Orion RC instead of Orion to band-aid fix these problems.
I truly hope they succeed but a few hours of driving the 1.0, it doesn't feel like a 1.0 yet.
My only gripe is that the favourites bar isn't right-click editable like Chrome or Brave - assume this is down to Webkit. Apart from that, joy to use and develop against.
I wish they'd spend their eng resources as a small startup on their legitimately great primary product - ad-free search.
- 66% Windows
- 18% MacOS
- 3% Linux
Right now, I can't try out Orion as one of the 66%.
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
What's a "large %"?
> And the % of users who are interested in trying newer alternate browsers and/or care about privacy also skews heavily away from Windows
I mean, enterprise users wouldn't try anything new of course, but I don't see the relevance to Windows. Would enterprise Mac users be any more inclined to try new things?