Very unfortunate news: was looking forward to another browser based on webkit available for the Linux community. The good news is that they’re at least open sourcing the code for the community.
TLDR; Kagi is ending development of Orion for Linux and Windows, but they’re open-sourcing both so the community can carry them forward. Kagi is stepping back from developing these platforms directly so the team can put more focus on Orion for macOS and iOS.
<Full Article in this spoiler>
Today we have an important update. We are ending development of Orion for Linux and Windows, and we’re open-sourcing both so the community can carry them forward. Kagi is stepping back from developing these platforms directly so our team can put more focus on Orion for macOS and iOS.
Orion is built by a very small team, just a handful of developers, funded entirely by Kagi users. We also chose to build it the hard way by not forking Chromium. That independence matters more than ever. The web needs more than one engine, and more than one company deciding what a browser should be.
When we announced Orion for Linux, the response was overwhelming. Many of you were thrilled, tested early builds, filed bug reports, and told us how much you wanted a WebKit-based browser on Linux that respects your privacy. Thank you. That work will soon belong to everyone.
Why we’re doing this When we decided to take Orion beyond the Apple ecosystem, we knew it was a big bet for a small, independent company. We made it because we believe owning the whole experience beginning with the browser, matters.
Building a cross-platform browser is something usually done by companies backed by venture capital or by large open-source communities. Kagi is neither. One thing we hear often from members is that they want us focused. They’re right. Rather than spread a small team across three platforms, we’re putting our energy where we can do our best work and opening the rest to people who want to take it further.
What this means for Orion on macOS and iOS Orion for macOS and iOS isn’t changing, except to get better. The team and resources that were split across platforms are now focused on making Orion on Apple devices faster, more stable, and more capable. Expect steady improvements in the coming months.
Download Orion for macOS Download Orion for iOS What open-sourcing looks like We’ll release the source code for Orion for Linux and Orion for Windows. A lot of good work went into it, and it deserves a future even if we aren’t the ones who finish it now. We’re thinking about this carefully and will release details in the next 30 days.
We’ve also reached out to open-source foundations and organizations about long-term stewardship. To be clear about our role: Kagi won’t be the core maintainer. These projects need people who want to own them.
Get involved If you’re a developer, maintainer, or organization interested in stewarding Orion for Linux or Windows, we want to hear from you. Reach us at support@kagi.com.
What this means for current users Linux: The current Linux Beta will keep working, but it will stop receiving updates from Kagi after October 2, 2026. We don’t recommend using it as your main browser.
Windows: We had planned to launch Orion for Windows in late 2026. That release won’t come from Kagi. Instead, the code will be available for the community to build on. If you signed up for the Windows newsletter, this will be the last update you receive from that list.
Thank you To everyone who tested, reported bugs, and believed in an independent browser beyond the Apple ecosystem: thank you. You helped build something worth sharing, and we’re glad to share it with the community.
Thank you for your patience, your enthusiasm, and your trust.
— the Kagi team
Good. I use and love Kagi, but they are spread way too thin
They should also drop the Mac and iPhone versions, it seems a waste of time and money.
I use the iOS version for the built-in uBO.
Does uBO work normally for you? I tried it a few months back but it didn’t seem as effective. I still have Orion installed but haven’t really used it much.
Yeah it works fine for me, even in youtube.
You pay monthly to have a browser?
No it’s free, only the search engine is paid (I don’t use it).
We should all be doing that if we wanted the browsers to not be shit, but alas, there’s no paid option for any browser I know of.
There’s a force paid option for Kagi. Pay, or it doesn’t work. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t understand why people throw a shitfit about YouTube ads and streaming ads- while simultaneously defending a paid browser.
It’s free though? Kagi the search engine is paid, Orion the browser is free. There’s still no paid browser that I’m aware of.
The problem with YouTube isn’t that it has ads, it’s that it ran at a loss for well over a decade and THEN started putting ads everywhere, increasing the amount every few months. If your service is only profitable with a ton of ads, put those ads there right away. The enshittification once you have a captive audience through the network effect is what sucks. We could have competitors and that would improve the quality for everyone, but Google sank billions into making sure nobody is using anything but YouTube and THEN started bombarding us with ads. That’s quite literally billions of dollars spent on making the market worse.
Agreed
I use the browser all the time, but tbh they really don’t need to offer it. Safari with Wipr2 is perfectly good. I just use Orion on my work laptop as a separation of work vs personal.
they are spread way too thin
So they focus on macOS, the least used platform?
I’m not in favor of Windows exclusive applications but if you only have the resources to focus on one platform, use the one with most users.
As for the Linux version: Looked like yet another Gnome Web knockoff. A WebKit browser whose GUI actually works well on Plasma and other non-Gnome desktops would be welcome but another one of those isn’t a benefit IMO
Also the platform users are probably least likely to deviate from the standard browser
It’s also the platform users most likely to pay for software or services.
It’s the least used but the one where the users have the bigger bucks unfortunately
iOS is no small platform
The vast majority of Apple users stick with the default browser and the vast majority of Windows users change the default browser. That’s why Chrome is the number one browser by active users.
That’s why Chrome is the number one browser by active users.
And I thought that was because it’s the default browser on Android, which accounts for the majority of the world’s devices.
Edge is 3rd place after Safari not because vast majority of Windows users change the default browser, but because basically nobody uses a computer anymore.
No idea who would touch this AI browser slopware.
I canceled my Kagi subscription a few years ago when they jumped back on the AI bandwagon and saw all the resources being moved off their core product and into AI features no one asked for.
All their AI is opt in, can be turned off everywhere with one switch, and even support small web.
I didn’t want my money funding AI development.
As someone in the same position, it’s a difficult line to manage.
I’ve criticized Kagi before, but it’s still unfortunately the best model for search on the market. I pay them money, they give me search results. As the prior post said, they’ve introduced switches to disable all of the AI. And if you believe what they’ve said about costs, then search is more expensive for them than AI — so if you use a lot of search (as I do, ≈1.2K/Mo), and don’t rack up AI usage, then that money isn’t going to AI, viewed in a vacuum of course.
You might dig Uruky.
Thanks!
why did they build from scratch instead of contributing to Firefox?
Firefox is incredibly complicated. It has a ton of bugs and security problems. Instead of building from scratch, I would start with Servo.
When Orion started, the Servo project was kind of dead. It wasn’t until a year later at FOSDEM, that they announced the refresh that started development up again. A great choice now, but at the time, and still today, WebKit is also a decent choice, as long as one doesn’t mind that most of its development and optimization targets the Apple ecosystem.
WebKit doesn’t help diversify the ecosystem, Blink still shares some code with it.
They forked almost 15 years ago. Of course they share some code, but not a lot. And even still… so? Or course it helps diversify when blink has nearly 80% market share.
But you’re just adding to another big player. WebKit going from 14% to 15% doesn’t actually do anything. Getting 1% market share with a completely different engine would definitely turn some heads
I suspect we’re on the same side here with only a slightly different perspective. I’m on complete agreement that ladybird, aside from its controversy, and servo represent way more diverse entries for new browsers to consider. I’m just saying WebKit is better for diversity than blink. Only by 5x or so but still, that’s something. Making the decision to start a browser today, 100% I’m going with servo.
WebKit is not starting from scratch. It goes back to KHTML which was started by KDE for their web browser back in the 90s. Apple built Safari on top of KHTML, forking the engine and creating @webkit@front-end.social. WebKit continues as an open source project, with native web integration in GNOME running through @WebKitGTK@floss.social. Ironically KDE and Konqueror stopped using WebKit, using Chromium these days. But WebKit is, at least to a degree, a natural choice for anyone interested in making an independent browser for GNOME or Mac OS.
Blink, the engine behind Chromium, is forked from WebKit, but it’s monopolizing the internet and is generally worth avoiding. I don’t think anyone is able to separate Gecko from Firefox, so a Gecko-based browser would just be a Firefox fork. Meanwhile @servo@floss.social competes directly with the KHTML family of browser engines by being more flexible, but it’s not ready for serious use yet. Once Servo is ready I suspect we will se a lot of independent browsers popping up.
Contributing to Firefox doesn’t make much sense these days. Mozilla, or at least Firefox, runs their own ship and have turned their back on the open source community. Those concerned about the open web are getting increasingly worried that Mozilla is not going to do a whole lot to counter Google’s influence, leaving it to Google to take the internet and destroy it in any way they see fit. If Mozilla does not fight for us any more the only thing we can do is to double down on independent engines such as WebKit and Servo.
I think this is the right move. They started on MacOS. They expanded to Linux and Win for reasons that were unclear (to me). If they can’t keep all three going, open-sourcing the code is appropriate. If people want to keep going, awesome. If not, well… And they refocus their resources to the platform that they presumably consider their primary home, else they wouldn’t have started with MacOS first.
I have Orion installed and occasionally use it. But I’m also a browser junky and can’t resist trying every new browser I read about. (I’m posting this from the recently announced Search browser and it’s using impressively low system resources. I recommend test driving it if you’re curious. I’m not affiliated in any way).
I’ve been using kagi for some time and have foggy idea what orion was and why would anyone use it beyond ‘it’s a browser’.
At the same time it feels really weird as in they are making it bigger then it is, there were (is?) multiple webkit based browsers that were doing fine with very small teams of mainteiners.
Orion on iOS is my favorite iOS browser.
It has the ability to use Firefox and chrome extensions so you can use uBlock Origin.
Many people would rather use Brave but I don’t trust Brave as they own an ad network.
It’s like Safari in terms of performance and battery usage, with extension support that isn’t pants-on-head stupid like Safari’s, better customization, and some advanced features. That’s all I really want.
Safari is just too basic for me to use as an everyday browser (especially on iOS).
I think the original impetus was that Safari makes it unreasonably difficult to change its search engines.
Tbh Orion is not stable on macos, they shouldnt have made the stable release, it still feels like a beta product. Memory hogging is a big issue in it. I stopped using it and switched to Librewolf.
That is unfortunate, I was looking forward to seeing them expand beyond Apple platforms only.
Maybe the community will take interest in it. Good on them for open sourcing it
Ladybird if anyone wants to watch this space, I’m most excited to see them succeed.
Ladybird is a new browser engine built from scratch. Not a fork. No user monetization. Backed by a 501©(3) non-profit. Status: In active development Target: Alpha 2026 (Linux & macOS) Get involved Support us About
The web is the most important platform in computing, yet only a small number of browser engines power the entire thing, each controlled by a company with its own agenda.
Ladybird is building something new: an independent engine, driven by web standards, and free from conflicts of interest.
Our first Alpha release for Linux and macOS is coming in 2026.
What makes Ladybird different Truly independent
We’re building a new browser engine from scratch, based on web standards. Not a fork of an existing engine. Singular focus
We are focused on one thing: building a web browser. No monetization
No “default search deals”, crypto tokens, or other forms of user monetization.
Why are so many people in FOSS weird fascists?
Weird fascists are overrepresented in tech + some FOSS communities have a weird sense of what it means to be “apolitical” (e.g. “being apolitical means I have to ignore that this guy is racist” type shit)
FOSS also atracts in general a lot of radicals, from all sides, as they all see it as anti establishment, as it goes well with their general anti establishment rethoric and often as a politcal stance to support FOSS as a form fighting against or acting against or just generally dissent against the establishment
This + fact Kling started slop-rewriting project with rust killed my interest to it.
Noooooooooo I’ve been so excited for Ladybird 😭
Personally, I just don’t see any point in developing anything for closed platforms like MacOS or iOS.
At the end of the day, you’re just making Apple more money for free, on very bad terms. They have all the control; you’re just an unpaid intern.
Who knows when Apple will stop supporting half the libraries your project relies on?
Instead, you can develop for open platforms, which genuinely makes the world a slightly better place. In addition to you having a guarantee the project won’t have to shut down overnight.
building a browser from scratch is just an insanely difficult task to begin with. Building a browser from scratch tailored to each specific platform instead of doing something like QT is just idiotic. There’s a very good reason why the majority of todays browsers are forks of Chromium or Firefox and why very few are their own from scratch. Building a web browser is probably one of, if not the most, complicated bits of software to build other than building an OS from scratch.
I’m not a fan of Kagi, I can’t justify paying for a search engine especially after honestly trying it and getting mediocre search results. I was optimistic about Orion but after following the development for awhile I knew it wasn’t going to pan out. they spread themselves too thin on that project and it sows further doubt for Kagi overall.
Kagi’s search results, in my experience, have been worth every penny.
Yeah Qt + Webkit would have rocked for cross platform.
That’s dissapointing. Was looking foward to trying it. At least they are open sourcing those versions though.
But there’s not a good way to debug for Orion on mobile without using the Kagi browser and Orion on iOS does behave differently than Safari even though in the US they are both built on WebKit
My only complaint about Orion was that it wasn’t open source so that’s good at least
If i wanted a Webkit based browser on Linux, Gnome Web (aka, Epiphany) it is.
I’ve started using Gnome Web as my main browser, and I’m super happy with it. I’ve been trying it occasionally for years, and only the last month or so does it feel mature enough to replace firefox.
I guess I have the advantage that I mostly avoid bloated websites, but still. For anyone looking to escape the web engine duopoly Gnome Web is very much worth checking out these days.
i dont use it as a main browser cause no extensions
Yeah, that’s fair. I still occasionally boot up Firefox just to click the Zotero button. For the most part though the built-in ad blocker and cookie blocker do what I need.
Weirdly enough It’s FOSS wrote about support for Firefox extensions in GNOME Web several years ago, but I have no idea what became of that feature.
while i am using Steam i use the built in Steam browser(Chromium),Firefox when Steam is closed and Gnome WEB when i am using a local tool only site.
