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Comment by HexDecOctBin | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame Firefox on iOS has failed/refused to support third-party content filters [1] since 2019. Just because they can't bring Gecko doesn't mean they shouldn't try to gain mindshare for the Mozilla Firefox brand on one of the biggest platforms, yet they refuse to put in the resources.

1: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/5198

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Somewhat ironically, you can install and use the Firefox uBO extension on Orion for iOS. Orion/Kagi figured out how to do it before Firefox/Mozilla.

Last I tried Orion was a couple of months ago. I wouldn't really say "figured out" per se. Like I see the vision, I like the vision, but I'm waiting.

I mean that they figured out how to support (most) browser extensions on iOS in their browser, unlike Firefox. They haven’t figured everything out, but I do daily drive Orion on iOS. I still prefer Firefox on desktop due to stability (and Orion’s extension advantage in mobile doesn’t extend to desktop).

Not most, they have figured out a few and they don't work very well.

Really all I wanted was uBlock and that works.

That being said, after being my daily driver for almost a year, I went back to safari about a month ago with Wipr. 3x speedup and battery efficiency. Unfortunately, it became buggier instead of less buggy :(

Still use it on mac tho - vertical tabs are a game-changer.

What do you need that doesn’t work?

uBlock does not work. I don't know how people check that it works for them, but for me it definitely does not. Neither does e.g. https://getindie.wiki/ - redirects don't work and I can't even get to the settings page from the menu (it does open once after install, but afterwards the button that's supposed to open it does nothing)

UPD: Somehow installing indie wiki extension second time (without deleting it, just pressing "add to orion" a second time) partially fixed it. Redirects now works, banners are broken, showing "visit $destination$ instead"

from what i understand orion is overflowing with bugs.

even without the bugs, after everything we’ve been through with crazy shit from closed sourced browser companies, the last thing i’d install would be orion/kagi. lol nuh uh.

not a chance i’d trust an ai company with almost the entirety of my online existence—especially when they close off and hide what they’re doing.

> from what i understand orion is overflowing with bugs

I use it as a daily driver on macOS. Not noticing the bugs anymore.

I just started giving it a try again about a week ago, and I second this. A year ago it was nearly unusable for any extension outside their preferred list, now it’s largely a pleasant experience.

I use it on iPhone, it has lots of bugs. But it's worth it for the ad blocking

Why not just use AdGuard or PiHole?

Those are DNS blockers. You're not going to block YouTube ads with those.

Plus, I want blocking when I'm outside of my house. I don't always want to run everything through Tailscale and Apple doesn't always make that easy. It'll turn off your VPN quite frequently...

Do you use Bitwarden with it, by any chance? I daily drove it for quite a while, about mid 2022-late 2023. Poor bitwarden support plus a pile of paper cuts drove me away. When it worked as intended, I liked it, and I'm not opposed to paying for a good browser, but it was too buggy at that time for a subscription to feel like a good deal.

AI company?

I thought Orion is made by Kagi?

They started peddling an AI assistant a while back:

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/assistant.html

I don't think I'd have called them an AI company on that basis any more than I'd call JetBrains an AI company for the same reason. But I can see why someone might call them that.

Orion is not made by an AI company, it’s made by Kagi.

If you’re an open source or non-profit diehard then yes, it’s not that, but as far as closed source for-profit businesses go, they’re a lot better than most. They are a public benefit corporation that has rejected VC funding, and their main pitch is aligning user and company benefit, despite the mainstream currently railing against it.

I’m not affiliated, just a user.

Vivaldi is closed source as well, yet it's one of the better browsers around.

(and has integrated ad blocker that is "good enough" for all practical purposes)

Not having any issues at all with Orion on iOS. And yeah like others said Kagi is not “an AI company“?

except it doesn't work. but you can install it, yes.

I want to like Orion but I've seen the same bugs for a year now.

I'm using Orion as my daily driver on iOS mainly because of a Safari bug[1]. It used to be very buggy, had frequent app crashes for no reason at all but nowadays (since a year?) works pretty fine, even the UBO plugin works fine.

1: You can long tap and select "Download Linked File" on any link in Safari, including links that are forbidden by Content Restrictions, such as a news.ycombinator.com link from google search. Ping me if a Safari engineer sees this and fixes it!

I use Orion. I hit some crashes until I told it to autoclose tabs after a few days. I’d rather leave that off, but it’s a minor problem.

I run three firefox plugins. They all work correctly.

What is it with said bug, that makes you use another browser because of it? Seems not like a big deal..

A bug that happens for no reason? Aren’t these typically some sort of memory access violation, or am I just showing my age of what used to be the cause? I know nothing of iOS inner workings, but is illegal memory access still possible where this would be the behavior?

Honestly, I was using Orion as a daily driver for a few months now and it's crazy unreliable in my experience. It also somehow uses more RAM than Chrome/Brave doing the same things, but with lots of tiny incompatibilities.

I actually just switched my self back to chrome/brave for what I was using Orion for.

It does work tho. Just not consistently lol

Here's my test: I install Firefox version of the plugin and enable additional filter lists like "annoyances" and "cookie notices", then go to eurogamer.net

1. I still see cookie notice

2. I open uBlock and it says "blocked on this page: 0"

That's "doesn't work" for me.

Hm, interesting. Did you report this to their bug tracker? They're quite responsive and cases like this help them finding edge cases.

My biggest use-case, youtube, works great, and most other sites work as well.

People who install Firefox on iOS is likely a very small number. If I were the project manager of Firefox, and with such limited resources and Google's cash going away any day, I would not put in any work either.

Sure, in which case they shouldn't have released it at all. A substandard product simply reduces the brand value.

Adblock feature!= Firefox on iOS

On the contrary, caring about their "brand" more than the actual Firefox software effectively describes what is wrong with Mozilla.

iOS "Firefox" shouldn't be a thing in the first place - definitely not with such a misleading name.

Apple really isn't that important.

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