I’ve been testing the Orion browser for macOS and iOS/iPasOS for a few days. It’s WebKit-based, and Apple OS exclusive. First impressions are positive, although I haven’t put it through its paces (check multi-device iCloud settings sync, push tabs to its limits, dig into exactly how it protects privacy by syncing through iCloud, etc). Would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially if anyone has tried it.
Out of the box, this browser purports to be more private than Safari, Firefox, Brave and Chrome (not exactly high bars to beat, except maybe Brave/Firefox?). The killer feature, however, is support for Chromium and Firefox extensions… on iOS/iPadOS. The two extensions I tried (AdNauseam and Youtube SponsorBlock) don’t appear to work; at least their extension web pages don’t appear to function. Not sure if that’s intentional, or if I messed something up.
In any case, would love to see some feedback from the community here.
I’ve used it for a while then found it a little janky at time so I moved to FF. This post inspired me to try it again and I will say it seems more stable. Also, the only extension I’ve installed is Ublock Origin (Chrome) and it works perfectly. This is on the desktop version. It scores 100% on the D3 adblock test. I haven’t gotten to play with it on my mobile devices yet but plan on it this week.
You’ll score 100% without uBlock origin using it’s built in ad blocker.
Confirmed! That’s impressive…
Thanks, I was looking for a good AdBlock test, but lost it in my bookmarks. Will try the D3 on my iPhone.
AFAIK Firefox on iOS/iPadOS doesn’t support extensions. Or were you referring to macOS (desktop/laptop)?
I was using desktop.
call me paranoid, but i somehow don’t trust a webbrowser thats basically developed and maintained by a single person who needs you to join his discord to download it (at least that was the case in 2021).
There’s a download link on the website. Discord isn’t needed.
Well, at least that changed. A friend is currently testing kagi‘s search engine, i still think $5/month for 300 searches is a grift, but yeah …
I’m a Kagi subscriber. I agree it’s somewhat expensive, but they’re also a startup and doing the insanely difficult task of taking on Google. Kagi has completely replaced Google for me in the past few months and I’ve really been enjoying having a search engine that’s not full of ads and I can tailor to my interests.
Devs aren’t the brightest when it comes to sharing their code. There was a open source router firmware dev that for some ungodly reason, distributed the binaries to his router firmware builds through OneDrive. Why, I still wonder to this day… especially since his source code was on Github. At least use releases, if you’re that lazy? Still far from ideal, but at least it’s marginally better and more convenient that %#€$& OneDrive. 🤦🏻♂️
Reminds me of this company I have to deal with that sells specialty equipment, but the software for interacting with it is hosted on Google Drive. The other day I ran into an issue because they forgot to “share” one of the links, so you couldn’t actually download anything without requesting access. Had to scour the web for an old build hosted on what looked like the first website on the internet.
So yeah, some devs are clueless about these kinds of things. I think hardware people in general either don’t know or don’t care to learn about the software side beyond the bare minimum.
Yikes, that’s terrible!
Love that it’s based on WebKit! I’m tired of non-native GUI’s in anything other than Safari. I’d kill for Firefox in a native (non-clunky) GUI.
The vertical tabs were the sole reason I switched over from safari
I installed it and tried to use Ad Nauseam. There was a similar bug where I couldn’t get the extension’s settings to function either.
Bitwarden extension for Firefox loads but doesn’t seem able to autofill… but it works (note: I have a self-hosted VaultWarden server, not BitWarden’s cloud service).
Maybe uBlock Origin will work? It seems to be advertised on their website.
Given that this thing is a beta and based on functionality so far, I am impressed. I wish there were a way to tweak the built-in ad and tracker blockers (e.g., add/remove custom lists), but this is already impressive for the iOS/iPadOS walled garden.
I could not get uBlock Origin to work on the iOS or iPadOS versions, personally
Ditto here. On the other hand their built-in adblock seems airtight. I’d like to see how it fares against Google’s/Youtube’s anti-adblock measures.
I’m in Canada and haven’t been hit with those yet… either that or my adblocks are working really well. 😉
Recent update fixed uBO
It loads and UI seems to work, but it still doesn’t actually block ads or click them.
The recent update fixes uBO
Huh, didn’t know Kagi was building that. Seems pretty ambitious
At this moment you have a almost unique fingerprint, so I don’t know how privacy is involved with this browser?
Thanks for the info. I’ve downloaded it in my iPhone and will on my iPad when I get home. I like that it automatically blocks everything.
Yup, I’m a proud subscriber of that community. Not sure that it has to do with this browser thread though.
Apple is not the platform to browse the dark web
What does this have to do with the dark web?
Sorry I missread this as onion browser
No worries!
