After the whole Firefox debacle I’m trying to find a new privacy oriented browser for my Mac and iOS devices with bookmark syncing. Ideally an open source browser but I don’t think one exists right now that has both macOS and iOS versions. For example LibreWolf has a Mac app but no iOS app.
It’s not open source but Orion browser which exists on both Mac and iOS is the only browser I can find on Apple’s App Store that has “Data Not Collected. The developer does not collect any data from this app.” on its app store page.
And it has some interesting features like being able to run Chrome/Firefox extensions on iOS (including uBlock).
But I did some digging into Kagi, the makers of Orion and was turned off by them being an AI search company. Also, despite Kagi claiming Orion completely blocks fingerprinting I couldn’t get Orion to pass EFF’s fingerprinting benchmark tool; it always said I was unique no matter what settings I tried. And I’ve read some other questionable things about how Kagi operates its business which I won’t go into here.
I know there’s Brave but I’m turned off by the company’s connection to crypto and their inclusion of AI in their browser.
Maybe Vivaldi? Vivaldi however says they do some anonymized telemetry to collect usage statistics. And again these two browsers also aren’t open source either.
I’m afraid there are no good macOS + iOS browser setups? I’m hoping someone will correct me. 😬
edit: typos
You don’t have to use a single browser. I use multiple browsers on my desktop: Mullvad, Zen, Vivaldi, Orion, and Brave.
On iOS, I use Brave and Orion.
I have hundreds if not thousands of bookmarks; I’d like them to stay in sync between desktop and mobile and that requires the same browser on both platforms, no?
The main problem I’m having is finding a trustworthy iOS browser that does absolutely zero tracking of its users. You look at the privacy info on Apple’s App store pages for like Firefox, Brave, Vivaldi, DDG, and other privacy oriented browsers, and they say they collect this or that. Only Orion from what I can tell promises they collect nothing (whether that can be independently verified idk since it’s closed source).
I’ve stopped using bookmarks. Instead, I use workspaces and vertical tabs. I have various workspaces, such as main, work, learning, shopping, and so on. Thanks to Orion, the tabs hibernate, which means less resources are consumed. All the tabs are available, and as soon as I click on one, it becomes active.
Best part is workspaces also sync with iOS.
Orion is said to be open source in the future according to its developer.