Does it have manifest V2 like CNAM filtering? And if it's chromium based how is it going to support back port of features that are making it to chromium without investment in a robust dev team?
thats literally why we get slop, because companies focus on investors rather than users?
when there are 3 people working on it, they would listen more to the community
How will they make money? Or is this always meant to be OSS community supported?
The challenge is that people have to get paid and infrastructure to build things costs money. Looks like there are only two people full-time at the company right now, though even then eventually they’ll need some revenue stream.
I love this project, but to have confidence that it stays that way it would be nice to see how they’ll replace they’ll stay afloat.
What makes me a bit uneasy about the project is that the website doesn't explain who is building it. For most open-source, I think that would be fine. But browsers auto-update, so their vendors essentially have the continued ability to run code on your machine. You want some confidence that they won't get owned and won't sell the access to bad actors down the line, so there is an element of personal trust.
All the website gives me is the name of a Wyoming LLC, Wyoming being one of the states you incorporate in if you don't want others to be able to find out who runs the company.
Granted, you can find out a bit more on Github, but in general, if you're building privacy- and security-critical tech... I think you ought to own it.
Why did anyone think it was a good idea to put tabs in the title bar. How the hell am I supposed to easily drag a window if I have 100 tabs open? Who the hell thought this was a good idea? Why do I feel like the only sane human being left on Earth? Why is this project continuing to use this horrible UI convention?
How are they going to make money or enshittify this in the future or sell it off to an evil billion dollar corporation who will sell my data off to god knows who?
> Why did anyone think it was a good idea to put tabs in the title bar.
Because we decided it was a good idea to keep making monitors wider and wider and wider without making them any taller, and not everyone wants vertical tabs.
You can pry my 16:10 monitor from my cold dead fingers. Give me a 3:2 and you'll never get it back.
Why do you have 100 tabs open in the same window, anyways? Use tab groups and profiles, with a secondary window for session-tabs that'll get closed soon. Having too many tabs is like having too many desktop icons, but worse.
My biggest gripe with Safari is that it only handles the few blessed search engines Apple has chosen.
On my personal systems I can use the extension to hack Kagi support in there, but it’s a bit of an ugly solution.
On my work laptop, we aren’t allowed to use the App Store, so I can’t get the extension. This means if I want to use Safari and Kagi, I need to go to the actual Kagi homepage, which is a very annoying behavior pattern.
I used Firefox for a while at work because of this, but now that’s been blocked too. I’m trying really hard not to give in and use Chrome, but at this point, it would make my work life easier. It supports adding other search engines natively, which is quite ironic.
I submitted feedback to Apple about this. They have integrated some of my feedback into past releases (silence unknown callers, most notably), but they must have some silly business reason for not allowing this, which is very disappointing.
>We'll keep support for MV2 extensions for as long as possible.
This doesn't particularly give people any confidence in your product if even the devs don't know how long they can hold the line.
Why not fork Firefox like Zen?
This is neat, and reminds me of Kagi's browser Orion, since their hero image features Kagi search.
Orion is WebKit based, so it uses less battery and feels faster to me compared to Chromium browsers, yet it largely supports Chrome extensions via a compatibility layer; like Helium uBlock Origin is included by default. It also has vertical tabs which is essential for me, and open-url routing between profiles.
However, I tried it in January 2025 and gave up on using it after a few weeks of sporadic bugs. I didn't lose data or anything but some actions in the UI didn't produce any result, or they produced a confusing unintended result. I hope they get better - I will probably give it another go in a few months, especially since Arc (my current browser) is now owned by Atlassian.
The biggest problem with Orion is the Firefox & Chrome extensions;
Many don't work properly, but you don't see any errors, so you have no idea what parts are working and aren't.
Like using a content blocker and "hoping for the best". It might work, or not.
That's one of the reasons i stopped using Orion...
But in this day and age, I need to understand more about intentions, and what sustains projects like this.
For the moment I've settled on Safari simply because Apple makes its billions elsewhere, even if I am increasingly disappointed with how they are playing along with politics right now.
114 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadHow does it compare to Firefox privacy wise being based on chromium?
https://github.com/imputnet/helium
Hard pass. Arc had an entire dev team with serious investors and couldn't just focus on building a browser
thats literally why we get slop, because companies focus on investors rather than users? when there are 3 people working on it, they would listen more to the community
The challenge is that people have to get paid and infrastructure to build things costs money. Looks like there are only two people full-time at the company right now, though even then eventually they’ll need some revenue stream.
I love this project, but to have confidence that it stays that way it would be nice to see how they’ll replace they’ll stay afloat.
All the website gives me is the name of a Wyoming LLC, Wyoming being one of the states you incorporate in if you don't want others to be able to find out who runs the company.
Granted, you can find out a bit more on Github, but in general, if you're building privacy- and security-critical tech... I think you ought to own it.
How are they going to make money or enshittify this in the future or sell it off to an evil billion dollar corporation who will sell my data off to god knows who?
</rant> :/ ...the site design is nice at least.
By holding a key and clicking anywhere in the window area.
> Who the hell thought this was a good idea?
Anyone who uses a better dragging method and doesn't want to waste space
Because we decided it was a good idea to keep making monitors wider and wider and wider without making them any taller, and not everyone wants vertical tabs.
You can pry my 16:10 monitor from my cold dead fingers. Give me a 3:2 and you'll never get it back.
Why do you have 100 tabs open in the same window, anyways? Use tab groups and profiles, with a secondary window for session-tabs that'll get closed soon. Having too many tabs is like having too many desktop icons, but worse.
On my personal systems I can use the extension to hack Kagi support in there, but it’s a bit of an ugly solution.
On my work laptop, we aren’t allowed to use the App Store, so I can’t get the extension. This means if I want to use Safari and Kagi, I need to go to the actual Kagi homepage, which is a very annoying behavior pattern.
I used Firefox for a while at work because of this, but now that’s been blocked too. I’m trying really hard not to give in and use Chrome, but at this point, it would make my work life easier. It supports adding other search engines natively, which is quite ironic.
I submitted feedback to Apple about this. They have integrated some of my feedback into past releases (silence unknown callers, most notably), but they must have some silly business reason for not allowing this, which is very disappointing.
This doesn't particularly give people any confidence in your product if even the devs don't know how long they can hold the line. Why not fork Firefox like Zen?
Nope. No. Thank you.
Props for featuring Kagi though.
> Google
> Your personal data fuels its monopoly. Market-dominant due to anti-competitive and anti-consumer practices.
> Qwant
> Based in Europe. Uses Bing results. Sends tracking data to Microsoft.
> DuckDuckGo
> Privacy-focused. Relies on Bing results but never tracks or profiles you.
> Ecosia
> May plant trees for clicking ads. Relies on Bing and Google. Sends tracking data to Microsoft and Google.
> Microsoft Bing
> Collects extensive personal data. Privacy controls are buried and limited. Subjectively overwhelming UI.
> Kagi
> Privacy-focused. Customizable results without ads or tracking. Requires a paid account.
should be changed to
> Openly and proudly collaborates with russian government
- breadth of the http/css/js standard? - inefficient implementations - requires too many resources?
Why has the market converged on two major players and most independent attempts fall short?
Orion is WebKit based, so it uses less battery and feels faster to me compared to Chromium browsers, yet it largely supports Chrome extensions via a compatibility layer; like Helium uBlock Origin is included by default. It also has vertical tabs which is essential for me, and open-url routing between profiles.
However, I tried it in January 2025 and gave up on using it after a few weeks of sporadic bugs. I didn't lose data or anything but some actions in the UI didn't produce any result, or they produced a confusing unintended result. I hope they get better - I will probably give it another go in a few months, especially since Arc (my current browser) is now owned by Atlassian.
https://kagi.com/orion/
Anyways, great to see a Chromium browser improving on the privacy of ungoogled-chromium.
Zen browser is eating their lunch at the moment.
Like using a content blocker and "hoping for the best". It might work, or not.
That's one of the reasons i stopped using Orion...
But in this day and age, I need to understand more about intentions, and what sustains projects like this.
For the moment I've settled on Safari simply because Apple makes its billions elsewhere, even if I am increasingly disappointed with how they are playing along with politics right now.