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
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.