I hope I don't come across too harsh in my criticism here, but this is in my wheelhouse and I like to keep tabs on the privacy browser market in comparison to Waterfox.

> A bold technical choice: WebKit, not another Chromium clone

I don't find this a bold technical choice at all for a macOS only browser? I think this would be more impressive if it was Windows as well, as back (maybe ~5 or so years ago) when I was investigating WebKit on Windows, builds were not on an equal playing field[1]. So the engineering to get that up and running would be impressive.

> Speed by nature

Unfortunately, as of 16:40 UTC, I am unable to run the browser (installer?) to benchmark it due to "An error occurred while parsing the update feed.", but I recall 2 years ago when I tested Orion it was the slowest of all the browsers on macOS and Safari had quite a lead. I'd also be curious, being based on WebKit, how much faster it will actually be on macOS vs Safari?

I dropped speed as a focus point on Waterfox after compilation flags started making less of a difference compared to the actual architectural changes Mozilla were making for Firefox.

> Privacy etc

I think comparing to other major browsers such as Chrome the points are valid, but against Safari I'm not convinced it holds up as much. I know there is some telemetry related to Safari, but privacy is a big selling point for Safari as well and I'd be curious to see actual comparisons to that?

Safari includes iCloud Privacy Relay (MPR based on MASQUE[2]) and Oblivious DNS[3] - arguably two very valuable features that a company at a scale like Apple can subsidise.

The entire AI section also feels like trying to have it both ways as well. They criticise other browsers for rushing AI features, position themselves as the "secure" alternative, then immediately say they'll integrate AI "as it matures." This reads more like "we're behind on AI features" than a principled stance. If security is the concern, explain your threat model and what specific architectural decisions you're making differently? Currently Firefox has kept AI out of the "browser core" as it's been put, and I don't see them ever changing that.

Kudos that they have >2000 people paying for the browser directly, but I will say it doesn't excite me to see another closed source browser entering the market (I don't see any mention here of open-source apart from mention of WebKit being open source).

I do realise this is more a marketing post than an actual technical deep dive, but so much is just a rehash of every feature almost every modern web browser has?

I'll keep updating this comment as and when I can explore the browser itself a bit more.

[1] https://fujii.github.io/2019/07/05/webkit-on-windows/

[2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/masque/about/

[3] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3340301.3341128

WebKit on Windows has progressed since ~5 years ago. The gap between the Windows port and the Linux WPE/GTK ports is shrinking over time.

Every JIT tier has been enabled for JSC on Windows[1], and libpas (the custom memory allocator) has been enabled.

The Windows port has moved from Cairo to Skia, though it's currently using the CPU renderer AFAIK. There's some work to enable the COORDINATED_GRAPHICS flag which would enable Windows to benefit from Igalia's ongoing work on improving the render pipeline for the Linux ports. I go into more detail on my latest update [2], though the intended audience is really other WebKit contributors.

Webkit's CI (EWS) is running the layout tests on Windows, and running more tests on Windows is mostly a matter of test pruning, bug fixes and funding additional hardware.

There's a few things still disabled on the Windows port, some rough edges, and not a lot of production use (Bun and Playwright are the main users I'm aware of). The Windows port really needs more people (and companies) pushing it forward. Hopefully Kagi will be contributing improvements to the Windows port upstream as they work on Orion for Windows.

[1] https://iangrunert.com/2024/10/07/every-jit-tier-enabled-jsc... [2] https://iangrunert.com/2025/11/06/webkit-windows-port-update...

I tried Orion before and It was good to me. The closed-source part It is also something I don't like. I wish they do the browser open-source. I want to see if they use rust underneath :p.

Although, let's be honest few people look at the entire codebase. However i believe It would be beneficial to make It open-source for them so they could have contributors. Also new features would be easier to add. For example, i know some protocols like Multicast QUIC which was almost impossible to be added in Safari and Chrome.

Orion Tech Lead here: Thank you for your patience — the issue has now been fixed. Please try updating now :)