Orion Browser by Kagi

The strongest positive reaction was that Orion is at least trying to create a non-Chromium option with a distinct UI and a stronger stance on blocking ads by default. Several people said the browser feels fast, the vertical tab implementation is genuinely good, and the built-in ad blocker plus WebExtensions support on iOS gives it a real niche. There was also appreciation for the Linux beta and for Kagi funding a Windows effort, because a usable WebKit browser off Apple platforms would slightly loosen the current Chrome monoculture. But the dominant view was that Orion is still not polished enough to trust as a daily driver. The pattern was consistent across Mac, iOS, and Linux. People reported UI glitches, broken settings pages, extension weirdness, battery drain, password manager failures, missing sync features, and sites that worked in Safari or Chrome but not in Orion. A few users said the browser has improved a lot and now works well for them, but even supporters often described it as "worth the bugs" rather than solid. That is a telling endorsement. The trust issue landed almost as hard as the bug issue. Many people were fine with closed-source consumer apps in general, but drew a harder line for browsers because they hold passwords, sessions, payment flows, and most of a user’s online life. Since Orion is closed source, commenters said you cannot verify how closely it tracks upstream WebKit, what extra attack surface Kagi’s own code introduces, or whether the implementation has basic hardening right. The consensus was not that closed source is automatically unsafe. It was that browsers are such a large attack surface that transparency is part of the product. A parallel argument pushed back on dismissing Orion as "just a WebKit wrapper." People noted that building a browser on top of WebKit is still a massive engineering project. The rendering engine is only part of the work. Browser UI, platform integration, extension compatibility, process model decisions, security hardening, and the countless ways vendors can break or improve the engine all matter. That left the practical conclusion pretty simple: Orion is interesting because it is not just another Chromium skin, but it is still competing with Safari on Safari’s home turf and losing on platform integration and reliability. The thread also veered into Kagi-specific trust questions that go beyond the browser itself. Some users objected to Kagi relying on Yandex search infrastructure and read that as indirectly funding Russia. Others defended it as a pragmatic way for a smaller search company to get broad index coverage in a market where the major indexes are effectively locked up. That did not produce a clear consensus, but it reinforced a bigger theme running through the whole conversation: people want to like Kagi and Orion, yet keep running into reasons to hesitate before trusting them with core infrastructure.