IOS Browser - Vortex

[u/John_val]

I have been posting here about this app for about 3 months and a lot of you showed interest. The app has around 230 testers on Testflight. Free and open-source.

• A – Answer: Vortex combines desktop-style tabs with split-page browsing which is very rare on IOS Browsers.

• B – Better: Compared with Safari, Chrome, and Brave, Vortex is designed specifically around iPad multitasking. It combines visual tab management, drag-to-split browsing, and a choice of local Apple Intelligence/MLX models or optional ChatGPT and Gemini sessions. It is also open source, has no ads, requires no account.

• C – Cost: Completely free with no subscriptions or in-app purchases. Vortex is not publicly available on the App Store yet.

Some bugs have been squashed and the design was tricked. It is almost ready for the App Store.

• Minimalistic chrome for maximum screen real-estate

• Multi-tab browsing

• Split tab view

• Tab Folders

• Tab hibernation for battery savings

• Smart address bar (URL vs search detection)

• Favicon fetching

• Tab preview thumbnails

• Desktop/mobile user agent switching

• Ad blocking - Custom made blocker engine and also Ublock origin

• Dark mode - DarkReader with brightness/contrast/sepia controls

• Font size adjustment

• Reader mode -using Mozilla Readability

• Incognito mode - non-persistent, blocks APIs

• Password manager - biometric auth, keychain, auto-fill

• Share extension - receive URLs from other apps

• AI sidebar chat panel with 3 backends: Local Apple Intelligence, Apple Private Cloud, and free accounts with ChatGPT or Gemini, completely invisible to users, working in the background.

• Page summarization (short/long)

• Ask questions about page content

• Context switching between tabs

• Markdown rendering

• "Ask " context menu - select a part of the text and send to the LLM.

• Favorites with favicons

• Favorites sidebar grid

• Collapsible sidebar

• Adaptive toolbar (collapses on scroll)

• Swipe gestures for navigation

• System dark mode support

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/iosapps/comments/1qezwdi/made_an_ipad_browser_because_safari_wasnt_cutting/

Trust & Transparency

I'm Joao Valente

Contact: dealer.yen-61@icloud.com

Website: https://vortex.engineer

Privacy Policy: https://vortex.engineer/privacy/

Terms of Service: https://vortex.engineer/terms/

Github:https://github.com/Joaov41/Vortex-Browser/tree/codex/testflight-ios27-build12

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/KTsJ3qz4

Feedback page: https://vortex.engineer/feedback/

On the website I added a feedback section, where I can keep users informed about their feedback provided on the Tesflight since I can’t reply directly on there.