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

  • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    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.