Export data to use in other browsers

pibeh

My Feature™️ entails the ability to export history and other data from Orion into other browsers. It can be alternatively viewed as an "import from Orion" in other (major) browsers.

I cannot use Orion on a daily basis before there's a way to export the data it has collected into other browsers. I always keep my history which is tens of thousands of items spanning over the years, and importing/exporting them is possible in major browsers, for example I can import Firefox history from Safari and vice versa, so I can always continue using the other browser seamlessly without losing that data. As far as I understand at the moment if you choose to use Orion it's a one-way street, with no way to switch back to Firefox or Safari without losing your data and starting over. It should be provided to prevent the lock-in described above.

Vlad

pibeh File -> Export menu?

pibeh

No, that one would only export bookmarks and passwords and while that's a nice thing to have, I'm primarily concerned with history items, a much trickier part to handle.

Vlad

pibeh How do you export history in Safari?

pibeh

Well, you don't, but I was simply trying to describe it in a generic way. There's usually just "import from" and it's built into the browser doing the import. Safari is closed source, but Firefox and Chrome (the two just off the top of my head) aren't, so it's always possible for you guys to submit that import code into their respective codebases.

Vlad

pibeh I am confused.

You say:

I cannot use Orion on a daily basis before there's a way to export the data it has collected into other browsers.

But the lack of same feature in Safari is not preventing you from using it?

pibeh

No. You got it wrong. Sorry if I have fogged the idea with those import vs export statements above. So,

From a user's perspective history specifically is not "exported" by a user, it's "imported", and it's happening on the receiving, i.e. importing, side. Other data such as bookmarks and passwords can usually be exported, but we'll put that point aside for now.
To answer your question, I can use Safari, and I can use Firefox and Chrome and Opera, without worrying about my history being lost because I can open either of those browsers and select "import history from..." and select the browser I've been using just before, say, for a month, before deciding to switch to another one. And that browser will be listed there in the import sources. If it isn't listed then it's always possible for me to to a two-step migration, say (to give an abstract example), Safari -> Chrome -> Brave, in case Brave doesn't support direct import from Safari but only from Chrome.

So my history is always intact and I can carry it between browsers that way.

Vlad

pibeh Thanks for clarifying. You can backup Orion history on demand as it is just a file on disk.

https://help.kagi.com/orion/misc/technical.html

ditto4356

I don't know if this is new since this discussion happened, but Safari definitely lets you export history:

The history exports as a JSON file in the zip export.

Update: I wrote a Python script to export Orion's history to JSON or CSV. No idea how to export it from the iOS version, though.