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.
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. 😉
Yup, I’m a proud subscriber of that community. Not sure that it has to do with this browser thread though.
At this moment you have a almost unique fingerprint, so I don’t know how privacy is involved with this browser?
Huh, didn’t know Kagi was building that. Seems pretty ambitious
