[yannicklesuisse]

PM of Orion here.

Orion (https://orionbrowser.com) is a WebKit-based browser for Mac, Linux, iPadOS and iOS that supports both Chrome and Firefox extensions natively ⟩ including uBlock Origin.

We have no plans to drop extension support. Content blocking is a feature, not a loophole, and we think users should have full control over what runs in their browser.

[monitron]

I'm a devoted Kagi user and really want to use Orion but keep running into perf issues and jank that frustrate me enough to switch back to something else. My most recent attempt was this past week.

You all seem to maintain a very fast pace of development (the changelogs are always chock full of cool stuff) but the problems I am hitting have remained broken for ages. Some examples include:

* The app hangs for 1~2 sec partway through typing a URL/search, when using the back button, or during other navigation

* The 1Password extension fails to fill usernames and passwords most of the time, regardless of which version I install. It works fine in Safari, Chrome, Firefox.

* Your built-in ad blocking triggers anti-ad-blocking measures on many news/blog sites now, resulting in the entire page being blocked.

I don't know your business, but maybe pausing new features and pushing for stability/perf/quality of life for a while (a la macOS Snow Leopard) would make sense.

[stogot]

“Your built-in ad blocking triggers anti-ad-blocking measures on many news/blog sites now, resulting in the entire page being blocked.“

This issue persists on other browsers with ad blocking extensions? Including on iOS with FF Focus enabled. Is there a browser+extension combination that does not have this issue

[beej71]

I don't know what uBO on FF is doing, but it seems like ages since I've been blocked for using it. Maybe I've just gotten lucky with the sites I visit.

[PRSXFENG]

I think those sites are likely using Ad-Shield anti ad block, which is very agressive

[fnordian]

Kagi is the new arch Linux.

[yannicklesuisse]

Thanks for the honest feedback, and I hear you.

Some context that might explain (though not excuse) the situation: unlike browsers built on Chromium or Firefox/Gecko, Orion was built from scratch on top of WebKit. No fork, no upstream codebase to pull from. That means every feature, every integration, every compatibility shim is ours to build and maintain. Browsers that fork Chromium or Gecko inherit years of battle-tested extension support, rendering fixes, and platform work for free — we don’t.

On top of that, the macOS team is 3 people. About 70% of our engineering time goes to maintenance and keeping up with WebKit/OS updates, ~20% to third-party app compatibility (extensions like 1Password, ad blocking lists, etc.), and what’s left — maybe 10% — goes to community support, discussions, and new features combined. That’s why our changelogs look active but long-standing issues persist: we’re constantly triaging a backlog with thousands of entries and making painful priority calls every single day.

None of this is meant as an excuse. You’re right that stability matters, and the issues you describe are real. But this is the cost of building a genuine alternative to the browser market rather than shipping another Chromium or Gecko wrapper. We think that trade-off is worth it for users who want real engine diversity and full extension support without Google’s or Mozilla’s constraints.

That said, we can’t do it alone — that’s exactly why Orion+ exists. If you believe in what we’re building, subscribing is the most direct way to help us grow the team and get to that “Snow Leopard” moment faster.

We’re sorry for the rough edges. We know they’re there, and we’re working on it.

[monitron]

I really appreciate the reply, and all your work. The difficulty of what you're doing is not lost on me; I was honestly blown away that you all launched a browser project at all. I think it's vitally important that the web not become a monolith in terms of user agents (even if, alas, one single rendering engine takes all the market share) so kudos to you.

[LoganDark]

Orion+ Lifetime buyer here. I strongly believe in Orion and I genuinely hope you reach that Snow Leopard moment. I also used it for months (and still use it for some always-open spreadsheets), but eventually had to switch to Safari due to the perf and stability issues. Funnily enough, you did prove Safari to be a viable daily driver for me, just not Orion itself yet.

[mead5432]

What about the glaring memory issues that is a pinned thread in your forum? It’s had one comment by a staff member over 5 or so months?

I loved Orion and have been using as a daily driver almost since day 1 including paying for it but now it’s completely unusable. I’ve since moved to Firefox.

The fact that a pinned thread was silent for months concerns me about the future of Orion. It honestly hurts to see.

[dabbz]

Literally this. Every response initially was "we don't see that and we let it sit for weeks". Now there's just no response from devs. I was unable to browse past more than 1 or 2 pages before memory ballooned to 30gb.

[jayofdoom]

No, you don't support Linux. I just tried to download it and got a "coming soon". Please don't post misleading things to HN :(.

Kagi has a good rep; misleading comments like this hurts it.

[HelloUsername]

> No, you don't support Linux

Here you go, official beta flatpak:

https://orionbrowser.com/download/oriongtk-early-beta

[giancarlostoro]

Any idea if that browser will ever go open source? I don't mind flatpaks but would rather just have some of my tools installed on my distro (which can be monumental to maintain).

[pseudalopex]

They said the plan was they would if enough people paid for it to sustain development.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46554890

[arikrahman]

I am also strongly perturbed by the misrepresentation, especially with no real package support. An alpha flatpak that posts "coming soon" is a bad first impression.

[hamburgererror]

I will consider Orion only when it is open source.

[graemep]

I only use open source browsers, but there are quite a few with adblocking. Firefox and a few Firefox forks, Brave and a few other Chromium based ones.

[maxloh]

Yeah. At least Chromium is open source.

[yannicklesuisse]

We get this question a lot. Our CEO is clear about this: Our guiding principle isn’t about licensing models ... it’s about interoperability.

The original Unix philosophy (McIlroy, Ritchie, Thompson) says nothing about source code licensing. It’s about programs that do one thing well and work together through universal interfaces.

Open source is a distribution and licensing model; conflating it with software openness misrepresents those core tenets. Orion supports Chrome extensions, Firefox extensions, and standard web APIs — that’s interoperability in practice.

That being said, the future is not written ;)

[thisislife2]

Sure, there's nothing wrong in pursuing a closed-source commercial business model. But you guys also said you won't collect any user data with the browser, and that may be true. And yet, you stopped offering offline installers, in lieu of online installers that can be used (in theory) to add persistent and unique ids, do data harvesting and dynamic / customised installations. That doesn't inspire trust to your pro-privacy claims.

[stonogo]

Applying the 'one thing well' bumper sticker to a web browser, which does a million things in a mediocre fashion, is a bizarre take. Not only is that whole comparison inapplicable, it's orthagonal to the point. You can do 'one thing well' and open source the code too, but you're not, and this post does not explain why.

[red_alpacalypse]

While you can install the Firefox uBlock Origin extension in Orion on iOS, it doesn't block any ads.

This has been reported for some time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203237

Could you please clarify?

[TingPing]

They can’t modify webkit on ios. They also don’t appear to contribute upstream. So it’s just not supported.

[red_alpacalypse]

Exactly. And that is why I find the parent comment from the Orion PM misleading at best.

Because it sounds like uBlock Origin works on iOS, when in reality it doesn’t and probably won‘t in the forseeable future.

[Obscurity4340]

What does uBlock Origin say in response to this? They had a TestFlight debut but i dont know anything beyond that

[red_alpacalypse]

uBlock Origin Lite had a TestFlight and now works fine as a Safari extension on iOS.

uBlock Origin never claimed their Firefox extension works in Orion. So I don't think they need to respond.

[lxgr]

Origin and Origin Lite are by the same developer.

[prmph]

Why do you have quite a number of glaring UX issues? I want to love Orion, but even something as basic as the tabs theming is driving me away.

By default is it almost impossible to distinguish which tabs i active in some situations. I think the browser automatically tints the window based on the dominant color of the page you are viewing, which means if I am viewing youtube for example, the whole browser windows is tinted a bit darker, in such a way that I can't easily make out outline of the currently selected tab.

Such a bummer for what should have been an easlity changeable behavior with settings: I do not want any tinting, and I want hight contract mode

[sjs382]

Happy Kagi customer here—I wish Orion was available on Android.

[Obscurity4340]

I recently needed to download Orion on a new computer and I couldnt find it in the AppStore.

No problem directly downloading from the source (arguably better cuz I can keep the installer) but is there a reason Apple isnt allowing Orion on the AppStore or was that a choice on Kagi's part?

[coffe2mug]

Linux?

I can't find it in the downloads.