Kagi Is Bringing Orion Web Browser to Linux
177 comments
·March 8, 2025Mossy9
jmbwell
Trying to use Kagi with other browsers lays bare the depth of collusion between browser makers and search providers. Getting out from under all that makes Kagi a whole lot more seamless and useful.
It’s ironic that it is its own tight collusion, with the difference that you can use Orion just as well with any other search providers as with Kagi.
So yeah, it seems like a departure from search, until you consider that for the features that make Kagi a worthwhile search product (privacy, neutrality, etc), “you can’t get there from here” with the other browsers.
chias
This is something I don't understand. Kagi has been my only search engine since they dropped the price to $10/mo. I've only ever used Kagi with Firefox, and I use it on Linux, Windows, and Mac. I just add it to my search engines and set it as default, which takes about 15 seconds.
Everything seems to just work seamlessly. Searching in private windows works without any configuration or token juggling.
I have never tried the Orion browser or the extension because I don't understand the problem that they allegedly solve.
treesknees
To set it as your default search engine on iOS, you need to first install a separate Kagi Search app from the App Store, enable the extension, and then dig through some fairly obscure Safari settings so that the Kagi app can run with enough permissions to intercept/redirect search URLs for other search engines.
So now when I search in Safari, the browser says “DuckDuckGo Search” but when I hit return Kagi jumps in. I also had to turn off search suggestions because those (as far as I know) would still come from DDG.
malnourish
I use Kagi at work in Firefox and Edge with no issues. I use it at home with Firefox and Chrome (Windows 10) and Iceraven on Android. No issues.
handsclean
It’s Safari you’re talking about. All other browsers, even Chrome, support arbitrary default search engines, while Safari doesn’t even support them via extension, requiring ugly redirect hacks. Privacy Pass is similar, with all browsers letting you implement it as an extension, except Safari. The problem is entirely and only Safari.
lxgr
> Trying to use Kagi with other browsers lays bare the depth of collusion between browser makers and search providers.
Absolutely. Safari not offering any way to add Kagi without weird hacks or extensions is absurd.
I get the case for search engines paying browser vendors a cut for being the default, but still getting paid after the user has overridden that selection is already somewhat dubious, and not allowing the user to fully provide their own query URL at all should be illegal.
lurk2
> (privacy, neutrality, etc)
It's proprietary. There's no way of knowing that it's private.
saagarjha
If only we had a field of computer science dedicated to analyzing the security properties of black boxes…
null
42lux
They started with Orion.
Mossy9
Oh really? I did not know that. Sounds a lot better than the other way around
brightball
My guess is that they realize the opportunity created by Mozilla’s sudden change in privacy terms.
colonial
I think this is correct. I refuse to touch Chromium with a ten-foot pole, but there aren't really any other options on Linux. (Yes, there is LibreWolf and other forks, but I doubt any have the resources to "go it alone" should Mozilla fold or go completely turncoat.)
The closest extant option is something like GNOME Web (also based on WebKit like Orion) but the lack of extension support and poor performance makes it a non-starter.
As someone who already pays for Kagi search, Orion will definitely be on my radar. I'll gladly volunteer $5/mo if I can just copy-paste my extensions unchanged and keep browsing.
TingPing
WebKitGTk performance has improved a ton in the past few releases. Orion will ofc match that. Also working on WebExtensions in upstream hopefully by end of year.
saagarjha
They've been working on Orion for years.
amelius
Relax, they didn't write the entire browser. It's webkit based.
zamadatix
Having been wondering what their cross platform plans for Orion were the other day and seeing this in the FAQ I don't think it's fair to frame it as small potatoes work just because it could have been even harder. It's still real work and a significant effort. https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#other_os_support:
"Are there plans for a Windows/Linux/Android version of Orion?
We currently do not have the resources to hire a new team to do any of these platforms yet.
Since Orion is funded by its users only, it is entirely up to the number of subscribers and Orion+ sales we have that will enable funding a new team to make Orion for any new platform. And building a browser is not cheap, especially one on top of WebKit."
Interesting that they concluded Linux was the next most worthwhile one to target but I suppose is probably more popular with users attracted to Kagi/Orion.
saagarjha
Linux is the platform which WebKit has the best support for, following macOS.
SllX
The CEO of Kagi has fairly strong views on user privacy as far as I can tell. I don’t know what his opinion of Windows is, but I’m willing to bet there’s a personal dislike of Windows and Android that is at least partially affecting the decision-making process here.
They also don’t seem like they’re trying to go big, just stay profitable.
Aeolun
I recently decided against Orion because I have linux machines as well. Can’t use it if it doesn’t sync across all my devices.
ZiiS
That seems like saying people who climb Everest are not starting in the Mariana Trench. The fact you could have made it ten times harder doesn't necessarily stop it being foolhardy.
Crontab
Doesn't Kagi Search just regurgitate Google's search results?
zamadatix
Kagi mixes many different sources, including some from their own indexes. They lean heavy into the "try to answer using an integration with a more focused oracle" rather than the "throw as many sites at the user as possible" approach.
Hikikomori
Not in my experience. Can also block or derank domains in your result, no more quora or Pinterest.
lawn
Kagi has much better results in my experience.
jasonvorhe
Never seen that happen and I've done hundreds of comparative searches by now.
aryonoco
Considering that Kagis’s results are actually useful and google just brings up listicles and ads, I’d say no.
dcow
Didn’t Kagi ship Orion first, before the search product?
poetril
Kagi has been one of the biggest value adds to my online life in a long time. Paying for the Kagi ultimate plans gets me access to the latest LLM models, and an incredible customizable search engine with a large focus on privacy. The Orion browser has been my favorite to use on iOS, I’m not sure if I’d use the desktop version because of its web kit base. But I’m glad to see it’s moving forward.
frizlab
Using a non-chromium browser is actually the only thing we can do nowadays to promote an open web. Also I have next to no issues using webkit on the web currently. It’s a good engine now.
lurk2
> Using a non-chromium browser is actually the only thing we can do nowadays to promote an open web.
Orion is closed source.
pyrophane
I believe the above is just referring to diversity of engines. If 99% of everyone uses Chromium then there’s no incentive to support open standards that work across all browsers.
vvpan
I keep being confused by this. People mention that Kagi has all these features but I never see them, do I have to up my subscription plan?
galleywest200
It seems that a lot of them are sort of "off" by default to keep search focused on search. If you want to get an LLM summary of a search, for example, end the search with a question mark. Example: "what is gravity?" instead of "what is gravity".
The summarizer lives at a different page, here: https://kagi.com/summarizer/
i_love_retros
Can also click the quick answer link on existing search results page.
And each search result item had a menu that includes an option to summarize the page.
vvpan
Oh I see. I knew "lenses" existed but as you say it's a multi-step process to use them and not from the browser search bar.
i_love_retros
You need the ultimate plan to get the assistant which gives access to lots of llms
james_pm
Orion for macOS is still pretty buggy and, in my experience, a bit too frustrating to use as my default browser. I want to use it and pay the $5/month even though I don't use it all the time. It's close to being good, but not quite there yet.
alpaca128
I recently tried it on iPad and unfortunately it feels mostly like a slightly less intuitive Safari with some touch gestures missing, and missed opportunity to fix one of them (swiping right to go back doesn’t work while the sidebar is open). Once I got Kagi search to work in Safari there was no reason to use Orion.
12_throw_away
Yeah, I basically give orion a try every few months, I think the idea is fantastic. But it just hasn't ever hit the level of bug-free reliability that I would need, especially with extension compatibility. (Can't say this is surprising at all - making a web browser would be a ton of work even if the web wasn't a moving target)
It does seem like their long tail of issues is going down - each time I check in, it is clearly improved. So fingers crossed it continues to get better ...
mholm
I think the biggest problem ends up being what Apple makes available to it. It does so well at feeling just like Safari, but Apple appears to not make Apple Pay, Safari keychain, and automatic sms code entry (easily) accessible to third party apps. That's what keeps making me switch back to Safari
nicce
Some bugs are pretty bad. There was one that drained my battery in 30mins. But I know it is difficult for a small team.
bpev
Yeahhhh this exact bug is why I haven’t been able to use Orion as my main browser. I usually use Safari, pretty much purely for the battery life gains.
throwaway743950
How long ago was that? I've been seeing consistent progress on bugginess.
nicce
This was actually just last week. I guess GitHub made that, but I could not yet reproduce it.
jmbwell
Counteranecdata: I use Orion every day as my daily driver on my work machine, together with Bitwarden for passwords and a couple simple extensions. I can’t remember it crashing or failing to render a page, and at least on my apple silicon machine, it has been very polite with resources.
evanreichard
The current version of Bitwarden straight up doesn't work in Orion [0]. I ran into this yesterday when setting it up for the first time. Wasn't a great first experience as it's literally the only extension that is a deal breaker to me.
I'm still giving Orion a chance for now... I just installed a slightly older version that works.
[0] https://orionfeedback.org/d/10197-bitwarden-hangs-on-load
dalenw
Same, in a way. I've been using it for a couple months on my MacBook Pro M2 Max, zero issues. Recently I installed it on my work laptop, M4 Max, and I get frequent crashes. No idea why it would make a difference.
bodash
Orion on YouTube is unusable at the moment. Click play, ad plays 1 second, disappears but then nothing else plays. Click again, another ad briefly appears and disappears. Have to resort back to Firefox with uBlock Origin just to watch YouTube
fnordsensei
Yeah, seeing this one too. Is it an Orion or Safari thing though?
ZeroTalent
It killed my battery. tried for a month.
grahamj
I’ve been full-timing it on iOS lately and yeah, pretty buggy. It comes with uBlock but doesn’t seem to work, and neither does bookmark/fave syncing.
CodeCompost
Kagi is cool and all but...
I'm in Europe. I'm busy disengaging from US based services.
Any good EU alternatives?
quinncom
Two ongoing projects to solve this:
Qwant and Ecosia, two European search engines, announced on October 24, 2023, a partnership to develop a European search index to lessen their dependence on US tech giants Google and Microsoft. https://insidetelecom.com/qwant-and-ecosia-are-building-an-i...
For the OpenWebSearch.eu initiative, 14 renowned European research and computer centers from 7 countries have joined forces to develop an open European infrastructure for web search https://openwebsearch.eu/
init2null
Fair enough, but I want the best possible searches. So that means Kagi, which includes Google, Bing, Brave, Yandex, and its own small web indexer. Pure European search is just unrealistic right now. Not unless you prefer the Eastern European flavor of Yandex alone.
freehorse
There is no good alternative right now. Even eu-based ones use google's or bing's search indexes, essentially being a different frontend for google and bing, so imo it does not make much difference. Kagi sort of does sth similar, but much better imo, which is also why I use them.
There is a common initiative by ecosia and qwant to build their own index [0], which is hopeful though, and something to look forward to.
pjerem
I’m in the same boat but for Kagi it’s a little different : I don’t pay them because they are privacy friendly (or at least that’s another reason) but because the search quality is better than everything else, including Google.
However fwiw, Startpage is nice.
dustyharddrive
Keep in mind that Startpage is owned by an American advertising company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1
esafak
Its founder is from Yugoslavia, so it is European in a sense. https://vladimir.prelovac.com/
CodeCompost
It's about jurisdiction. You can claim to be privacy friendly but if the laws in the country your services are being offered from can legally demand you break it...
layer8
GOOD search might be worth a try: https://european-alternatives.eu/product/good-search
It’s hosted in Germany and uses the independent Brave search index.
sanbor
lxgr
Seems to be based on Google and Brave, both US companies.
areyourllySorry
extra salt in the wound because they pay google for the queries. at least when searching yourself you pay with data, which may or may not be less profitable for them
stevage
I use Orion a bit on Mac. The blocker for me is that it doesn't support Ublock Origin. They claim that their built in ad blocking does 90% of what you need, but I really just want to be able to remove page elements at will.
vulcan01
This is kind of surprising. For me, uBlock Origin works perfectly on Orion (installed from the Firefox store), and the element zapper / eyedropper in uBlock Origin works as well. I haven't seen any difference between uBlock Origin on Firefox vs Orion.
stevage
Thanks, will investigate again.
cosmic_cheese
Orion has a native element remover, just click the paintbrush icon in the toolbar.
uBlock Origin support is at least partial because whenever I click an analytics-redirect link in my email and it opens in Orion, I get a uBlock “tracker blocked” page.
BrawnyBadger53
I'm using Orion with ublock origin right now?
konart
Kagi is still buggy as hell for me though.
Text selection jumps all around even on hacker news (I say even because HN is pretty has pretty simple html\css\etc). Any web site with non-english letters and complex layot kills it.
CGamesPlay
I assume you mean Orion. Does that still happen if you enable compatibility mode? I don't have the same problem, but I've reported several problems on the feedback forum and had some luck with getting them resolved.
konart
Ooopsie. Yes, I was talking about the browser. I'll read about compatibility mode, but I'm not sure why would I need to enable something like this on an WebKit browser on MacOs while Safari is doing great.
perihelions
Primary source:
- "We're thrilled to announce that development of the Orion Browser for Linux has officially started!"
- "Register here to receive news and early access opportunities throughout the development year: https://forms.kagi.com/?q=orion_linux_news "
https://bsky.app/profile/kagi.com/post/3ljqsgjmkpk2n
(I interpret that to mean there's a closed beta?)
dooglius
What exactly is the benefit over Waterfox or Ungoogled Chromium here? The FAQ https://kagi.com/orion/faq.html#firefox seems to be things that are specific to Mac or have privacy features already offered by open-source alternatives.
c0balt
Fwiw, it's a webkit-based browser. Another alternative browser engine in a usable browser is a plus for the Ecosystem.
On the other hand, it promises to be a simple yet usable (builtin adblock + privacy) browser. Ime, brave is probably the closest however it has a lot of nagging around their crypto and ads.
wkat4242
Kagi has crypto now too? I thought that was just brave.
yurishimo
The comment you replied to is also saying that they find the Brave crypto annoying.
c0balt
No, it doesn't. Sorry, my comment was not worded clearly there. The nagging around crypto and ads on the homepage are a (anti-)feature of brave (that don't exist in Orion).
ashton314
Kagi does not have crypto
cosmic_cheese
For the Mac version, one of the “features” is that it’s built with the native UI toolkit and tries to blend into the desktop instead of setting itself apart with “branded UI” like browsers tend to do these days. Presumably the Linux version (which I’m assuming is built with GTK) would similarly adhere to GTK desktop (mostly GNOME) conventions.
Mossy9
I would say it's the business model. Customers paying you to provide a good service is straightforward for both parties
7thpower
Orion was a letdown for me. I’ve tried multiple times to switch over but basic things like autofill not working consistently were dealbreakers.
palata
I have been a happy user of Kagi search for a couple years, but I really hope they don't start going everywhere.
They have Kagi translate, they also mentioned building an email service. I like Kagi search because it works well. I actively avoid their other products because I want to encourage them to stay focused and make a good product.
freediver
Thank you for your feedback. Please do not avoid our other products :) It makes the Kagi eco-system stronger. We do not want to be a one product company, at mercy of big tech and other platforms. We are genuinly trying to create a user-friendly, user-centric alternative for consuming the web. It has always been the plan. And all that while keeping the search product changelog the most active of any search engine in the world https://kagi.com/changelog
edent
I wish there were a Webkit based browser for Android.
There are dozens of Firefox- and Chrome-based browsers, but nothing else. Wonder why?
mappu
Igalia are doing an Android port of webkit named WPE-Android[1] including a mini browser shell. There is an APK you can run[2].
1. https://blogs.igalia.com/jani/bringing-webkit-back-to-androi...
2. https://github.com/Igalia/wpe-android/releases/tag/v0.1.3
edent
I caught my fish! Thank you :-)
c0balt
Because a browser is not just the engine (JS, Wasm, ...). A chrome/Firefox derivate is far easier to create because you can piggyback on their integration work (and maintenance) around these components.
goneri
I used to be a Kagi customer, but the fact that they waste their energy with all these distractions is depressing. They should instead build a real search engine and stop reselling Bing.
I've been loving Kagi search and am really looking forward to Orion being available outside Apple land. You can join the email list here: https://kagi.com/changelog#6479
I'm a bit worried that Kagi might be over-extending here. Instead of focusing and capitalizing on search, they're expanding to the difficult business of browsers. I'm always hesitant when companies try to do everything everywhere all at once, since that might cause a loosening of focus on the original product.
I hope them all the best nonetheless - people actually paying for software is due a comeback!