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Apple launches Safari Technology Preview, a browser for developers including experimental web features

safari

Apple today announced a new browser, sort of. It’s called Safari Technology Preview and its meant for developers to be able to test and experiment with future web technologies and upcoming features. This is similar to Google Chrome Canary, which allows developers to play with in-development web technologies ahead of official releases. The app even comes complete with a new purple icon.

Apple will be updating Safari Technology Preview on a fortnightly basis, with each release signed for security. Download Apple’s new browser from the developer portal, with automatic updates through the Mac App Store.

Safari Technology Preview is a standalone application, so you can install it alongside a normal version of Safari. It also supports iCloud features, which the typical WebKit Nightly builds do not include. The debut release includes numerous new features for developers to make better web apps — there are no noticeable user-facing changes we can see. Developers can read up on the technical changes here.

The Safari Technology Preview is unlikely to be that useful for most OS X users, as it is tuned for use by web developers. For instance, the Develop menu is enabled by default. Moreover, stability is not guaranteed. Although the preview releases will be far more stable than nightly builds, not everything will have been as comprehensively tested as a normal version of Safari.

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Comments

  1. taoprophet420 - 8 years ago

    I really don’t see the advantage of this over WebKit nightly, unless Apple plans to more start more frequently update Safari like they did a bling time ago.

    • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 8 years ago

      – each release signed for security
      – automatic updates through the Mac App Store.
      – supports iCloud features, which the typical WebKit Nightly builds
      – fancy purple icon.
      .

    • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 8 years ago

      What about the WebKit Nightly?
      You may already be familiar with the WebKit Nightly, which serves a purpose similar to that of Safari Technology Preview. For most people, we think Safari Technology Preview is a more convenient and stable way to live on recent WebKit changes. Unlike the nightlies, Safari Technology Preview supports the full set of iCloud-based Safari features, including iCloud History and iCloud Tabs. And we’ll use the time between Safari Technology Preview releases to curate and test updates to a point where we think developers will find it practical to use as their primary browser.

      – webkit https://webkit.org/blog/6017/introducing-safari-technology-preview/

    • philips9179 - 8 years ago

      Separately, I don’t understand why Apple don’t bring their stock iOS and Mac apps to the app stores so they can innovate and update them faster, instead of waiting for every major os update to update the individual stock apps

  2. Abedoss - 8 years ago

    I think they may revive Safari for Windows again, and I belive they are working on iMessage+Facetime for Android.

    • J.latham - 8 years ago

      I would hope so. Wasn’t FaceTime supposed to be open source? I might be wrong, but pretty sure Steve said that at the announcement and I don’t think it’s happened yet. A nice alternative would be bringing it to other ecosystems at least.

      • Matisyahu Gardiner - 8 years ago

        IIRC I think the original aim was to open it up as an open standard given that it was based industry standards such as h264, aac, xmpp etc. but apparently there was an IP challenge which undermined the whole idea of opening it up so this is where we are today.

      • Abedoss - 8 years ago

        I think porting it to other OSs “especially Android” serves Apple and its customers in the same way iTunes did.

    • philips9179 - 8 years ago

      I hope they revive safari for Windows as I’m having to use Firefox right now as its practically the only browser that’s available cross platform, save for chrome (privacy issues) and opera (doesn’t work with some websites I use)

      • Abedoss - 8 years ago

        Thats right I have the same situation.

  3. Hamza Sheikh - 8 years ago

    Looks like Apple finally decided to bring Safari to next level with some real separate updates for developers and keeping the general public away from all the beta testing and massive trouble issues.

  4. memuslism - 8 years ago

    This looks like what “Google Chrome Canary” is to “Google Chrome”, “Safari Technology Preview” is to “Safari”. It’s for those who like living on the bleeding edge.

Author

Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.