After the whole Firefox debacle I’m trying to find a new privacy oriented browser for my Mac and iOS devices with bookmark syncing. Ideally an open source browser but I don’t think one exists right now that has both macOS and iOS versions. For example LibreWolf has a Mac app but no iOS app.
It’s not open source but Orion browser which exists on both Mac and iOS is the only browser I can find on Apple’s App Store that has “Data Not Collected. The developer does not collect any data from this app.” on its app store page.
And it has some interesting features like being able to run Chrome/Firefox extensions on iOS (including uBlock).
But I did some digging into Kagi, the makers of Orion and was turned off by them being an AI search company. Also, despite Kagi claiming Orion completely blocks fingerprinting I couldn’t get Orion to pass EFF’s fingerprinting benchmark tool; it always said I was unique no matter what settings I tried. And I’ve read some other questionable things about how Kagi operates its business which I won’t go into here.
I know there’s Brave but I’m turned off by the company’s connection to crypto and their inclusion of AI in their browser.
Maybe Vivaldi? Vivaldi however says they do some anonymized telemetry to collect usage statistics. And again these two browsers also aren’t open source either.
I’m afraid there are no good macOS + iOS browser setups? I’m hoping someone will correct me. 😬
edit: typos
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But I did some digging into Kagi, the makers of Orion and was turned off by them being an AI search company.
It is optional. Unlike most other search engines, it only pulls an AI summary if you explicitly request it. They’re not trying to push it at all. But they’d be dumb to just ignore it completely.
despite Kagi claiming Orion completely blocks fingerprinting I couldn’t get Orion to pass EFF’s fingerprinting benchmark tool
Fingerprinting is simply more complicated than pass/fail. Does your other browser(s) pass? Check out deviceinfo.me, look at the info there and have a good think about how much of it is specific to you. Also Safari is notoriously fingerprint-resistant and Orion is a fork.
There really aren’t any “great” options for browsers. It’s a very resource-intensive process that costs a lot of money without a lot of great ways to get that money back.
Mullvad browser is a good one, funded by their optional VPN service. It’s basically TOR browser without TOR network. I find it to be too restrictive though.
Zen and Floorp are other good Firefox fork alternatives. One of those would be my recommendation if you don’t like Brave or Orion.
Kagi doesn’t just add optional AI features, they are an AI-first company that wants to turn search into an AI agent. They wrote a manifesto about it.
Maybe manifestos aren’t worth much anymore, what’s with Mozilla abandoning theirs, but I tend to believe a company when they tell me what they are.
Where did you find this “manifesto”?
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/
Read about Kagi’s origin story and The Age of Pagerank is Over blog post, which serves as our manifesto.
https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over
Previously posted at kagi.ai on a page titled “Our Manifesto”
iCab is pretty configurable and pretty old school.
Wow, I didn’t know iCab was still being developed. I remember it from like 20 years ago.
Its iOS app store page says it doesn’t collect any information, so that’s promising. The recent reviews as of version 11 aren’t great; lots of bugs apparently. I might try it nevertheless.
Thanks for the recommendation!
AFAIK apple only allows their own browser engine on IOS, so there isn’t really a fundamental difference beyond having an account to sync bookmarks and history
While the rendering engine (WebKit) is the same across iOS browsers, WebKit is an open source project. To my knowledge there isn’t any telemetry baked into WebKit that reports back to Apple or whomever about user identity or behavior; tracking would have to be added by the developers making use of WebKit for their browser, I think? So in terms of privacy, it should make a difference which iOS you select.
Kagi is more of a private search company than an AI search company, but you need AI in your marketing to get funding these days.
They have done a pretty decent job of actually making useful applications of AI though; their summarizer tool is actually quite useful. It normally at least gets the jist of the page or YouTube video you’re looking at.
They also have taken steps to protect user privacy with their privacy pass extension … and they’ve announced a Linux port of Orion is on the way.
I’d feel much better if Orion was open source; but Kagi does seem to be taking their privacy commitments seriously.
Orion is nice
