[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Insight (YC W19) - an iOS browser with ea...
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Launch HN: Insight (YC W19) - an iOS browser with easy-to-make
extensions
Hi HN! I'm Archa, one of the cofounders of Insight Browser
(https://insightbrowser.com/). We let you deeply customize your
search and browsing experience on iOS. You can create extensions on
the phone itself, using simple if-then conditions and often without
writing any code. For more advanced extensions, you can use JS. 14
years after iOS Safari brought the mobile browser to near-parity
with desktop, most mobile browsers are still one-size-fits-all, but
the internet isn't one-size-fits-all. It's very long tailed, both
in content and in how differently people use it. There is now a
generation of users growing up with iOS who still crave the power
that's available on desktop. Some mobile browsers come bundled with
ad-blocking, and there is a limited way to do extensions in Safari,
but extensibility on mobile has been nowhere near desktop. Apple
has restricted what developers can do with WKWebView, so we started
to look into whether there's ways to work with that but preserve
most of the usefulness of extensions. We surveyed existing
extensions on the Chrome extensions store and realized that most of
them fit one of two patterns -- augment pages with content or
remove content from pages. (There's a third major category of
scrapers or dev tools, but we felt that was less relevant for a
mobile browser) Inspired by that and frustrated by missing what we
had on desktop, we built Insight, where 90% of extensions can be
built on the phone with if-then conditions (e.g. if searching
Amazon, then search Google Shopping with the same query).
Extensions are designed for mobile first. They are swipe gesture
friendly and don't clutter up pages. For more advanced extensions,
you can use Javascript to write a script that's injected into
webpages you pick. For example, the extension to invert bright
website colors for better dark mode
(https://share.insightbrowser.com/10) works like this. Some of my
personal favorite extensions on Insight right now are -- Detect
fake Amazon reviews (using Fakemeta) and set price alerts (using
CamelCamelCamel); Open a page with cookies disabled or a JS-free
version of the page (https://share.insightbrowser.com/11); Make
reading articles easier by injecting eye-guiding color gradient on
the text (powered by Beeline Reader). Extensions are automatically
suggested as you browse pages, simplifying discovery. We do not log
identifiable user data, and if you want to be extra safe about
privacy, you can disable all communication with our servers in the
settings. Insight is still very early. On iOS, it's built on top
of Firefox. We're excited about open sourcing the iOS Insight
codebase once it's better documented, as well as making Insight
available on Android and desktop soon. (Btw, if any of this is
interesting to you, we're hiring: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/insight-
browser) A couple of caveats -- we don't currently support Apply
Pay through Insight. Apple does not allow a regular WKWebView to
use Apple Pay, just Safari and SFSafariViewController
(https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_w...).
We also cannot support syncing bookmarks from other iOS browsers
directly, because apps can not access each other's data in any way
on iOS. We are however working on a way to import bookmarks from
your desktop browsers, and hoping to push that soon! We'd love to
hear what you think of Insight. You can download it on iOS at
https://insightbrowser.com/. Please tell us your feedback and
ideas. We'd love to help you customize the web as you see fit!
Author : archajain
Score : 53 points
Date : 2021-02-26 16:06 UTC (6 hours ago)
| jimmyechan wrote:
| What type of user who would you say gets the most value out of
| building Insight extensions?
| archajain wrote:
| I would say the general persona is power user/tinkerer types
| who really like customizing their experience but until now
| really couldn't on mobile. However there's people who come to
| the browser for a very specific extension (e.g. improving their
| search for recipes http://share.insightbrowser.com/12), and the
| world of extensions is very long tailed because you can spin up
| their own in under a minute.
| kw_dev wrote:
| Would it be possible to have paid extensions? I mean, let's say a
| I got an extension on Google Chrome which I sell with Gumroad and
| I'd like to integrate it with your web browser as well.
| abhinavsharma wrote:
| Yes, we're very excited to work with extension developers! But
| there's 2 important things to consider:
|
| Apple's terms clearly don't allow us building a store within
| the app (Fortnite vs. Apple) so we're not going to distribute
| paid extensions directly but it sounds like you use Gumroad and
| probably a secret link to distribute?
|
| Also, there's some OS enforced limitations on compared to the
| full WebExtensions spec, but if you share the extension with
| me, I'm happy to take a look. I'm abhinav@insightbrowser.com if
| you'd like to reach out directly.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Big miss here is iOS shortcuts.
|
| I would work now on adding shortcuts for automating browser
| actions & interacting with content.
| abhinavsharma wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, we've been hearing occasionally about
| iOS shortcuts and are looking into how to best integrate them.
|
| I'd love to hear some workflow examples of things you'd
| automate that involve the browser. That would really help us
| guide how to elegantly integrate shortcuts.
| gnicholas wrote:
| So glad to have found out about you guys deep in a HN thread back
| in 2020. I've enjoyed participating in the beta testing and have
| discovered features like one-tap-to-close, which I never realized
| I wanted in a browser. So much better than the 2-3 taps often
| required to close browser tabs in other browsers!
|
| It's also been great working with you on the dev side, as you
| ported my Chrome extension to Insight. You made quick work of
| getting BeeLine Reader into your Reader Mode, and I've heard from
| many of our users who have switched over to your browser as a
| result. Really excited to be working with you and seeing how you
| transform web browsing on iOS!
| archajain wrote:
| Thank you! It's been great working with you too and BeeLine is
| now one of my favorite extensions, can't imagine reading long
| articles without it.
| elpakal wrote:
| this is awesome - congrats on the launch - I just downloaded it!
| personally I can't wait to be able to make my dream extension
| that blocks posts of cats on Reddit so that I can actually browse
| it.
| archajain wrote:
| Awesome, excited to hear what you think!
| andiareso wrote:
| It looks like you collect a lot of device and browsing related
| data according to your privacy policy. What is your business
| model and why should I trust you with my data?
| archajain wrote:
| Insight suggests extensions while you browse -- this helps the
| most useful extensions get discovered at the right time. To
| enable this, browsing information is sent to Insight servers.
| However, this is not ever stored in connection to your personal
| information (email, etc). Also, if you're still not sure, we
| let you disable all communications with Insight servers
| entirely in app settings.
| the_duke wrote:
| This is a red flag for me, to be honest.
|
| We all know how "we will never store this" becomes "we will
| never sell this" becomes "well, we need to make money", all
| with privacy policy changes that no-one reads.
|
| Extension suggestions can also be implemented client side.
| archajain wrote:
| That's fair tbh. Implementing this server side has let us
| iterate faster and get this out the door. I think
| implementing it client side is better however. Till we get
| there, we let you turn this feature off entirely and just
| use client side features, which still lets you utilize
| extensions.
| adv0r wrote:
| Out of curiosity: how can a YC startup take two years to launch a
| product?
| archajain wrote:
| Haha we had a major pivot last year. We started off building a
| search engine and browser for doctors. We realized they would
| be much better served through a customized browsing experience.
| Then we realized everyone could benefit from being able to
| deeply customize their browsing easily.
| drcongo wrote:
| Can I ask what the business model is? I'm quite liking the
| browser, but not sure whether I'm being sold in order to use it
| for free.
| archajain wrote:
| We're working on a set of paid features for Insight, which we
| expect will be subscription based. I'm glad you're enjoying
| Insight so far!
| tech234a wrote:
| This looks cool! Since Insight is based on Firefox, it there any
| chance Firefox sync will be added? Or perhaps sync for
| Chrome/Edge?
|
| This reminds me of Kitt Browser, which brought some of the Chrome
| extension APIs to iOS. Eyeo acquired it to make Adblock Browser
| for iOS, and Kitt has since been removed from the App Store.
|
| Some resources relating to it are still online [1, 2] and Adblock
| Browser, which is derived from Kitt Browser, is open source [3,
| 4].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/kitt-browser
|
| [2]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nfoWMgNYMkE
|
| [3]: https://github.com/adblockplus/adblockbrowserios-core
|
| [4]: https://github.com/adblockplus/adblockbrowserios
| SahAssar wrote:
| Any iOS browser can't be based on firefox since apple does not
| allow it. At most it can be a shell around a webkit.
| archajain wrote:
| Thank you! We're looking into building sync now (it's the most
| requested feature for us right now), trying to make it work not
| just with Firefox but all popular browsers. Thanks for pointing
| to Kitt, I'll check it out.
| sidcool wrote:
| This looks like a great idea! How is dev tools support?
| abhinavsharma wrote:
| Thank you! Extensions are either no-code or use vanilla
| Javascript.
|
| For no-code extensions, the logic is represented in simple
| base64 encoded JSON.
|
| For extensions that use Javascript, it's a very simple model
| where a script is injected at the end using Javascript. You can
| develop these using just console on any regular desktop
| browser's JS console and mobile emulator (Firefox, Edge,
| Chrome, etc.)
| gnicholas wrote:
| It would be great if you had extensions for LinkedIn and Twitter
| that eliminated posts like "Person X liked this" or "Person X
| commented". I hate that there's no way to use these platforms the
| way we used to: just to see stuff that was posted (or reposted)
| by first-degree contacts.
|
| I now use both Twitter and LinkedIn via the web because I find
| the apps to be annoying (and for the most part, unnecessary). It
| would be great if you could take the functionality to the next
| level by allowing content blocking that removed the massive cruft
| that these platforms bombard us with.
| archajain wrote:
| That's a really good idea! We're going to take a pass at
| building that.
| [deleted]
| ignoramous wrote:
| Extensible browsers are true "user-agents"! Congratulations on
| the launch.
|
| As uMatrix user, I see a lot of potential, and love the no-code
| approach to let users build extensions themselves to suit their
| needs. Can't wait to see this go cross-platform: I get it is
| going to take a while but any tentative dates for Linux (deb) and
| Android flavours?
|
| That said, I want to point that the FAQ on the homepage for "What
| about privacy?" is a bit incomplete, "Insight disables trackers
| by default with a much larger blocklist than Safari. _It uses
| server-side logic to suggest extensions as you browse. This data
| is never logged, but you can also turn this setting off so
| Insight does not make any calls to its servers at all._ "
|
| 'Cause the privacy policy [0] reveals that Insight may collect
| information including IP addresses, device-ids, location, and
| browsing history and share them with third-parties; which is not
| really what a few folks (like me) who block trackers in
| expectation of better privacy (and not just speed) want to hear,
| especially with the monetization strategy unclear at this stage.
|
| [0] https://archive.is/q4u4R
| archajain wrote:
| Thank you! That's a good catch, our FAQ was slightly out of
| date, and the privacy policy is the most recent. I've updated
| the FAQ and apologize for that lack of total clarity. We want
| to be as transparent as possible because our business plan is
| going to work around a paid tier and we have no intention of
| data exploitation. Insight does send browsing data to servers
| to suggest extensions -- we'd like to move this logic client
| side but right now the complexity around search extensions in
| particular requires server side logic and logging, similar to
| how even DuckDuckGo has to log. This is a core value
| proposition of Insight and how it simplifies the browsing
| experience. However, you can turn off all communication with
| Insight servers in the settings if you'd like even more
| privacy. We want our users to be comfortable using Insight, so
| let me know if there's anything else that bothers you.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| How about a fully fledged ad blocker?
| abhinavsharma wrote:
| We've tried to make it as powerful as the platform allows --
| there are limitations to how large iOS allows the blocklist to
| be.
|
| What other features from Adblockers are you missing with
| Insight that would be helpful?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Here's hoping Apple doesn't slap you down for this. The
| frustration I've faced while packaging iOS apps has permanently
| soured it for me, I hope you don't put you through the ringer.
| archajain wrote:
| I've looked through their terms and we're in the clear, but
| :fingers-crossed:
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(page generated 2021-02-26 23:00 UTC)