New browsers keep launching, usually with an AI focus. But a new option from the team behind the Kagi search engine takes a different approach. Orion is built on WebKit and emphasizes speed and user privacy—in other words, it’s a browser built primarily to attract Apple users. After a lengthy beta, the Orion Mac app just launched. Here are the details.
Orion for Mac launches 1.0 app, joining iPhone and iPad versions
Today Kagi has announced the 1.0 launch of Orion for Mac, a new browser you can download here.
Why another browser? Orion isn’t focused on AI, though it says it does integrate with other AI tools.
Instead, it aims to create a lightning-fast browsing experience on Apple platforms, and prioritize user privacy.
Here are some of the distinguishing features Orion’s website highlights:
- Focus Mode: Instantly transform any website into a distraction‑free web app. Perfect for documentation, writing, or web apps you run all day.
- Link Preview: Peek at content from any app – email, notes, chat – without fully committing to opening a tab, keeping your workspace tidy.
- Mini Toolbar, Overflow Menu, and Page Tweak: Fine‑tune each page’s appearance and controls, so the web adapts to you, not the other way around.
- Profiles as Apps: Isolate your work, personal, and hobby browsing into completely separate profiles, each with its own extensions, cookies, and settings.
The new browser is completely free to download and use. It also comes with 200 free Kagi searches, no account sign-up required.
Kagi is monetizing through an optional Orion+ subscription at $5/month, which unlocks some extra perks:
- Floating windows: Keep a video or window on top of other apps.
- Customization: Programmable buttons and custom application icons.
- Early access to new, supporter‑exclusive features we’re already building for next year.
The roadmap for the coming year includes: deeper customization options, further improvements to stability and complex web app performance, new Orion+ features that push what a browser can do while keeping it simple for everyone else, and tighter integrations with Kagi’s intelligent tools.
You can download Orion for Mac, iPhone, and iPad here.
If you want to hear more from Kagi’s CEO, he joined 9to5Mac’s Apple @ Work podcast earlier this year for an interview. You can listen here.
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