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faster than any other browser out there. Orion is able to do this by using process optimizations and bleeding-edge WebKit builds, not yet available in Safari.

This claim is made on the Orion website... yet is it?

I know @Vlad likes a video, so here's Safari TP Release 208 (Safari 18.2, WebKit 20621.1.5.1) vs Orion Version 0.99.129-beta (WebKit 619.1.11.111.2) side-by-side on a typical website, uncached browsing.

In this short typical user flow of following a few links to checkout a website, you can see Orion is slower at nearly all tasks - you can "feel" this lag all the time using Origin, where Safari it's much less.

Things to note:

  • Orion completes page loads slower
  • Orion seems to be processing JavaScript slower
  • Orion seems to response to mouse clicks slower (and without UI it sometimes appears to have not event fired the click event... but it does eventually work [without a follow up click])
  • The Strava webservers and regional caches should be in the Orions requests favour, as I often make the requests in Safari before Orion (so Safari is often paying the TTFB penalty)

I want to like/use Orion... but it's hard to when one of its main features is untrue in real usage (this on top of the many other bugs and UI quirks [many I've raised]).

NOTE: I've heavily compressed the video to make it upload able to this forum... but you can see the interaction timing still.

Describe the desired functionality.

faster than any other browser out there

Orion to live this claim and be faster.

Version 0.99.129-beta (WebKit 619.1.11.111.2)

Sequoia (15)

    mountainash on a typical website

    Your post makes it seem like this can be reproduced consistently across a wide variety of websites. If that is the case, could you share a comparison on a website that does not require an account to use and test?

    I was able to reproduce Safari beating Orion on Speedometer 3.0 but I haven't noticed any issues in my daily browsing so I haven't had the need to compare Orion to Safari. Keep in mind Orion RC does not ship with optimizations so the lower score is expected.

    Speedometer 3.0 results on my setup:

        mountainash Can you provide the URL you are using to reproduce this? Can you reproduce this in a Orion clean profile?

            Just for data points, I collect Speedometer 3.0 scores so I can put some from my M1 MacBook Air here

            Orion 129 beta (fresh install, no extensions, no browsing history)

            Orion RC 129.2 (fresh install, no extensions, no browsing history)

            Safari 18.1

            Safari 18.2

            Safari TP 206

            Safari TP 207

            Safari TP 208

              Both uses Webkit, however if you are using extension, it will make the browser slower. There is no browser with is immune to this. Seems like Orion isnt either.

              Orion's latest version as of this comment is still faster on my machine , however , if you are not on the RC channel, you are using an old version of webkit. Hence it might be slower than Safari 18.1.

              Hope this helps.

                Hey mountainash , would you be able to provide some additional info about your browser setup?

                • Do you have any extensions installed? If so, which ones?
                • Have you tried a clean Orion profile?
                • Have you tried compatibility mode?
                • Is there anything else that might affect performance, since there are plenty of variables?

                Anything that would help us reproduce and address the behavior you're experiencing.

                Here are records from my MacBook Pro M1 comparing, each record is with cleared caches, clean profiles, and no extensions:

                • latest Orion-beta vs Safari TP

                • latest Orion-RC vs Safari TP

                Each record is with cleared caches, clean profiles, and no extensions.

                As other guys mentioned - WebKit version matters a lot, and since you've compared Safari Technology Preview with bleeding edge WebKit, it might feel a little faster.
                At the same time, as per the records above - Orion-beta feels quite similar to Safari TP, while Orion-RC is quite a bit quicker.

                So it would be helpful if you could provide us any other details so we can reproduce and address this.
                Many thanks in advance!

                    Thank you for looking in to my issue so quickly and to such detail! For the record, both my Safari and Onion has 1 extension enabled (both with [WebScrobbler](https://github.com/web-scrobbler/web-scrobbler/releases - but they weren't "approved" for the strava.com domain as it's not music related) - obviously the Safari version of the extension differs from the Chrome version running in Orion. My entire cache also wasn't clean, but I'd not pre-visited those in the video pages before making it in either browser. This was meant to show "normal" usage.

                    Either way my point remains... the lead selling-point of https://kagi.com/orion/ being the fastest browser out there... might not be so true - and I hit it often enough that I've switched back to something more "rounded"/complete. Naturally this isn't the only selling point for Orion. Keep on honing the browser to get where you want it - and I'll check back again in the future.

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