this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2026
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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.

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

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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 68 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I read the article. They’re open sourcing the Windows and Linux versions, so the community can take over if they want to. So it will live or die based on what the community actually wants from it.

As a Mac user, it’s weird to see a company drop the other two in favour of maintaining the Mac version. I don’t use it, or Kagi, but I’m aware of both. It’s a good platform but we don’t have the users. Same with Linux, but it runs on more hardware, and bleeding the Windows market share benefits everyone, including Windows users.

As for iOS, there’s no winning the browser war there. It’s either Safari or compromise. I like Firefox, but it doesn’t/can’t do enough. DDG is good for YouTube because it blocks the ads. But mostly I just use Safari. On my Android phone, I use Firefox with uBlock Origin, naturally.

[–] fatcat@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 1 month ago (2 children)

very good argument for using orion on ios is that they actually support ublock...

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Between Google taking a dump all over Android and this, I might actually switch to iOS after being an Android user for almost 20 years.

[–] fatcat@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Haha and here I am thinking about switching to graphene os. Although I’m reasonably happy with that iPhone. At least Apple is pretending to care about privacy and it is very clear from the start on what it can and can’t do. Biggest grieve for me is the keyboard, hate it and for some reason there are not many alternatives.

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[–] baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 month ago

I made the switch a while ago and I’m much happier with the result. It’s far from perfect, but it’s free from the jankiness and random bullshit that comes with a Google product. At least you know what you’re getting with Apple. And the hardware is far superior and is supported for a long time.

[–] TheFrirish@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 6 points 1 month ago

Honestly it's not as bad as people make it out to be and it's also worse all at the same time. The gestures are awful, the animations take too long even if you reduce them and the keyboard has autocorrupt with the added bonus of not registering input properly. The three main positives for me are: the battery (on standby time), video/camera are very good, and the shortcuts app which enables you to create things that are missing in iOS.

Oh and certain apps do get preferential treatment on iOS but the open source space is quite barren compared to Android.

[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago (5 children)

There's uBO Lite for Safari.

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[–] neversaydie@programming.dev 57 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Good. I use and love Kagi, but they are spread way too thin

[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 31 points 1 month ago (3 children)

They should also drop the Mac and iPhone versions, it seems a waste of time and money.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 7 points 1 month ago (7 children)

I use the iOS version for the built-in uBO.

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[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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

[–] MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also the platform users are probably least likely to deviate from the standard browser

[–] Orygin@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 month ago

It's also the platform users most likely to pay for software or services.

[–] TheFrirish@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 10 points 1 month ago

It's the least used but the one where the users have the bigger bucks unfortunately

[–] lol_idk@piefed.social 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)
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[–] shifty@leminal.space 17 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Marthirial@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

All their AI is opt in, can be turned off everywhere with one switch, and even support small web.

[–] shifty@leminal.space 24 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I didn't want my money funding AI development.

[–] TheKaul@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They're not developing AI. They give you access to a bunch of AI models, but they don't train/create them. And as the guy above says, it's completely optional. You don't even get an AI answer like Google unless you add a ? to your search.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

So if I, the customer, pay money, and this money gives me (optional) access to a bunch of commercial models... Does that not fund AI?

[–] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can see exactly where every penny went on your account page. Search and AI use are separate line items. If you don't use it, no money will go to it

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Well that's a pretty good system, I have to admit.

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[–] TheKaul@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well that's complicated. You are not funding AI development. Kagi is not an AI developer.

Is purchasing product from a company who uses an AI chatbot on their website or to take phonecalls funding AI? I wouldn't think so, but if enough people are using it, maybe it is...? Guess it really depends on how you look at it.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Money coming from me that ends up with a company that supplies an AI product, directly or indirectly, funds AI. Am I wrong in saying that?

If I'm not wrong, it's not complicated. But maybe I'm missing something. I don't think I can easily see in which way you are looking at it in your example. 🫣

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[–] Glitchvid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 month ago

No only can you disable all ai features, they also have a report button for slop that will downrank ai generated results.

[–] littleomid@feddit.org 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] crypt0cler1c@infosec.pub 16 points 1 month ago

No idea who would touch this AI browser slopware.

[–] lemonhead2@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

why did they build from scratch instead of contributing to Firefox?

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Firefox is incredibly complicated. It has a ton of bugs and security problems. Instead of building from scratch, I would start with Servo.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] esc@piefed.social 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 month ago

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.

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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 4 weeks ago

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).

[–] razen@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 9 points 4 weeks ago

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

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Sad, but makes sense. I always wondered how they could fund the dev effort for Linux/Windows.

These comments though, whoa… it seems everyone either loves or hates Orion.

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

What are they built on outside the US?

[–] lazylemons@lemmy.today 5 points 1 month ago

That's dissapointing. Was looking foward to trying it. At least they are open sourcing those versions though.

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 month ago

My only complaint about Orion was that it wasn’t open source so that’s good at least

[–] DupaCycki@lemmy.world 5 points 4 weeks ago

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.

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

If i wanted a Webkit based browser on Linux, Gnome Web (aka, Epiphany) it is.

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