[Megathread] Orion Memory Issues

dino

websites I bookmarked appearing in the Orion Web Content process list

This is not an expected behavior, but there's an edge case where if there's the bookmark is created under Favorites folder, and the page have SVG image as favicon or touch icon, it needs to be loaded in background, where it renders on a web view to be converted to png image cache. Or, if that's a reading list item, it also saves the local cache sometime.

Orion Web Content (Prewarmed)

There are two use-cases, where one is to create a new fresh web content process to be used for new tabs, and another is to hold cache for some back navigation where the cross-site navigation moved to separate process to avoid security issues.

ChandlerWu

I don't think it's ok for orion to talking about its memory efficiency, purely for marketing purposes and doesn't reflect the truth, at least for now.

ChandlerWu

ChandlerWu you could say orion browser is simple and modern webkit-based browser, but never say it's memory efficient at least for now

Yannick

I agree with you. But we can't change our copy every time we update WebKit and run into new surprises 😔
Our priority is still to honor our commitments, but sometimes we need to finish the work we started and then work back on them.

fnxfch

Version: Version 1.1.1 (149), WebKit 625.1.8
Hardware: MacBook Air 15", M2, 2023, 16 GB RAM
macOS: 15.7.7 (24G720)

Recent browsing habits: I keep Orion running for a long time with tabs left open all session (lingering rather than closing things out), and I navigate/reload a lot within the same tabs. Over a session I also open and close a fair number of tabs, though I rarely open/close separate windows. Memory climbs steadily the longer the session runs and doesn't come back down; quitting and relaunching resets it to a few hundred MB, then it climbs again over the following day.

Amount of tabs open: about 31 open at a time.

Activity Monitor: After a day the main Orion process reaches 59 GB (memory footprint), with 930 MB additionally in "Orion Graphics and Media." On 16 GB physical RAM this drives 25 GB of swap and yellow/moderate memory pressure. Screenshot:

Extensions enabled:

Consent-O-Matic 1.1.3
SponsorBlock for YouTube 6.1.6
uBlock Origin 1.72.0

Not yet tested with extensions disabled.

wibbsy

Genuinely how is this still not fixed? It’s not a feature missing it’s a fundamental flaw in the existing app.

Am I being stupid but isn’t Orion effectively a paid service from Kagi subscriptions? I use it because I pay for Kagi but assumed my funds also go towards development of Orion?

OBF

hithubfr it’s directly competing with GPU workloads, Metal rendering, and other processes in a way that doesn’t happen on Intel/discrete GPU setups

Good observation - in my case the rendering frame rate visibly and dramatically declined while various screen elements fail to update

wibbsy Genuinely how is this still not fixed? It’s not a feature missing it’s a fundamental flaw in the existing app.

I completely agree with this sentiment. I have tried just about every browser on every platform, and I think it was extremely dishonest to represent this as a usable product which deserves our financial support. All should be warned that Orion on Mac is still in the “alpha” development phase and not suitable for any kind of production work or mission-critical applications. I like the concept, the hybrid extension support, container tabs & other privacy features… but right now this browser is just a trap that takes a lot of effort to escape, because all of your stuff must be migrated to another browser when you realise how dysfunctional Orion actually is. For example:

• Exporting a document as PDF does not work with some popular sites (like Google Gemini chats)

• When the memory leak occurs, the browser becomes increasingly unresponsive & characters are lost if you type too fast

• Creating desktop shortcuts to pages on Twitter, Reddit & Github usually do not work

• Cannot display the full page title at top of application window

• On YouTube and “doomscrolling” blogs where the page title dynamically changes, those changes don’t propagate to Orion UI elements — so tab titles dont match the tab content and saving or shortcuts wont work. Sometimes the screen flashes and you just hear a bell sound.

• The reload button does not work on some tabs.

I would not pay for this, especially when Brave just implemented containers... if anything, Kagi should be paying me for quality control work! I am several weeks behind schedule because of this fiasco, and was afraid to restart because in most browsers the contents of private windows are lost when you do that. Based on this experience I am more inclined to abandon Orion and maybe come back in a year to see how the project is doing. But the one thing I will probably never do is recommend this browser to anyone else because I cannot trust this company to represent its products in an honest manner and do not want to be responsible for causing others to lose time and work the way that I did. The only reason i am not more pissed is that I’m exhausted from this ordeal, and just glad to have found a way to rescue some critical research from a maze of frozen tabs which was destroying my productivity !!!

{Massive memory leak}
⬆️ Massive memory leak

⬆️ Page loading often sticks here

{Screen Time extension hangs, with display corruption}
⬆️ Screen Time extension hangs, with display corruption

{Tab suspender is broken, with display corruption}
⬆️ Tab suspender is broken and will not resume (with display corruption)

{Text entry is corrupted}
⬆️ Text entry fields are corrupted (and typing lags)

{Wrong page titles shown on tabs (Doomscrolling blogs)}
⬆️ Wrong page titles shown on tabs (DoomScrolling blogs)

{Wrong page titles shown on tabs (YouTube)}
⬆️ Wrong page titles shown on tabs (YouTube)

{background tabs begin media playback}
⬆️ When the system awakens from sleep mode, 5 background tabs start media playback

kateabbott

RoxyRoxyRoxy In case this counts as general memory weirdness — this afternoon, Orion has stopped loading any pages for me. I was trying to log in to zoom at the time, and I had a number of sets of tabs open. (I'm also on a Mac running Sonoma 14.8.5). Orion got stuck on zoom, in my nontechnical terms, wouldn't load or open a new meeting and gave me a spinning rainbow on that tab, and then in every tab or window I had open.

I've tried force quitting and restarting the browser, and then restarting my laptop.

I am running Orion 1.0.6 right now, because the next update after that would not work on the website I use most for work (https://btwberkshires.com) — the website wouldn't scroll, so I couldn't update it, and the redesigned URL search bar and tab arrangement was very difficult to use. I really want to keep Orion as my primary browser, and I'll be glad of any help.

Superunlikely

redacted as I found a parallel bug that I can't separate yet.

Magebarf

Did some tests over the last three nights, and on my end it seems like uBlock origin may be a very large contributing factor.

(To preface, prior to experiments my track record was that Orion occupied 50-80GB after leaving computer sleeping for 20-24 hours)

First night, disabled both of my firefox extensions (all exentsions installed in Orion). Leave computer sleeping for roughly 24 hours. When waking it back up, Orion is at _3GB memory usage.

Second night, re-enabled uBlock Origin. Leave computer sleeping for roughly 24 hours. When waking it back up Orion is at _54GB of memory usage.

Third night, re-disabled uBlock Origin, and re-enabled other Firefox extension (try to rule out if it's the firefox API itself that's faulty). Leave computer sleeping for roughly 24 hours. When waking it back up Orion is at _3GB memory usage.

leademeule

I found Orion to be performing exceptionally poorly over the last few days. With upwards of a hundred tabs open things have been previously just fine. With now barely a dozen tabs open this page occasionally hangs while typing. Activity Monitor is showing absurd memory usage for the Orion Graphics and Media process.

I believe the issue may line up with the most recent version of Orion being installed on my machine but have not precisely isolated the cause. I also have a use case that may be relevant to the issue. I am working on a large LaTeX document through Overleaf. This involves rendering a complex PDF with nearly a hundred pieces of small embedded media to HTML every time the document is recompiled. This easily happens over a hundred times when editing for a few hours. This has had the time to accumulate over several days.

leademeule

I can reliably reproduce this. I am back to 121GB of memory usage again.

newtoorion

Ever since the 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 releases, I'm having this issue too. It's particularly noticeable when scrolling, which is far choppier now, and when zooming in/zooming out of webpages.

Easiest way to reproduce is just go to Google Maps and just try moving the map around. On the version before 1.1.1, on an M5 Macbook Air, response was instantaneously. The lag between interacting with the page and the map moving is now several seconds.

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