Safari

Today Apple released macOS Sequoia beta 5 for developers, the latest version of the upcoming OS update for the Mac. Alongside other performance improvements and bug fixes, the highlight of today’s release is a new feature for Safari users: Distraction Control.

The first iteration of Apple Intelligence is now in users’ hands. New betas for iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1 have brought a subset of AI features in an early preview version. One such feature arrives in Apple’s browser, Safari.

Here’s how iOS 18.1 infuses Safari with AI to provide webpage summaries.

Apple is kicking off a new high-profile ad campaign today focused on Safari. The campaign takes direct aim at other browsers, such as Chrome, where “your browsing is being watched.” Safari, meanwhile, offers several robust privacy protections to protect your web browsing data.

There’s also a new story on Apple’s WebKit blog detailing Privacy Browsing 2.0 for Safari.

Safari is one of the many Apple apps bundled with iOS and macOS. With iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, Apple has introduced Safari 18 with new features and improvements. However, when it comes to the Mac, you don’t need to update your Mac to macOS 15 in order to try out the new Safari 18 beta.

Apple has made significant changes to the App Store guidelines in the European Union in order to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) antitrust legislation. One of these changes allows developers to release iPhone web browsers with their own engine, but the company is making it difficult for developers to test their apps before releasing them to users in the EU.

Being prompted to make an iPhone web browser choice in Europe has seen an uptick in the use of third-party apps, but not everyone is happy about it.

The EU itself is investigating whether Apple’s implementation of the antitrust requirement goes far enough, and developers of third-party browsers say the process gets one thing right, and two things wrong …

Apple’s WebKit team has published a new blog post this week detailing how they’ve made significant upgrades to Safari’s performance over the last several months. The improvements come following the debut of Speedometer 3.0 in March, described as a “major step forward in making the web faster for all.”

One of the changes Apple had to make to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) was to present customers with a list of iPhone web browsers during setup, and to choose the one they want. Browsers must be listed in random order, so that Safari isn’t highlighted.

We’d previously seen some indication that the new antitrust law was proving effective, and a new report today says this is true for six leading browser companies …

Apple recently released iOS 17.4.1 and macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, both with two security patches. For users running older versions of macOS, the company has now released a standalone update for Safari, its own web browser, with the same patches included with macOS 14.4.1.

One change Apple made in iOS 17.4 has resulted in a notable increase in the number of iPhone owners choosing to install the Brave Browser app to use in place of Safari.

The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) required Apple to prompt European iPhone users to choose their default browser, with its own Safari app merely listed as one of the options …

Apple is making major changes to how web browsers can operate on iPhone for customers in the EU. iOS 17.4 will introduce the option to set your preferred default browser when you initially launch Safari, and browser makers will be able to use other browser engines.

We’ve written before about StopTheMadness, a powerful Safari extension designed to improve the experience of browsing the web. Now, developer Jeff Johnson is out with StopTheMadness Pro, the next-generation of the Safari extension for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Plus, head below for four promo codes for 9to5Mac readers…

New in macOS Sonoma, Apple gives everyone new reasons to never need to open Chrome again. One of those is a new feature for turning any website into an app on your Mac’s Dock. 

Extensions continue to play a key part in adding third-party functionality to Safari. They’re often great ways to boost productivity, security, and privacy to a rather barebones browsing experience. But with the hundreds of Safari extensions available across different devices, it can feel overwhelming. Here’s a list of my top picks.

The ongoing Google antitrust trial is revealing all sorts of interesting elements of the Apple-Google relationship, which has put the companies’ lucrative deal for Google search to be the default browser on iPhone, iPad, and Mac under legal scrutiny.

Via Bloomberg, the latest development is that Apple considered replacing Google search as the default search engine in Safari, when customers used Private Browsing mode. Google would have remained the default in normal search mode. The talks between Apple and DuckDuckGo took place between 2018 and 2019.

Apple yesterday released an iOS 16.5.1 update to fix a security vulnerability which is being actively exploited by attackers – but then withdrew it again.

The problem, it appears, is that a tiny change in Safari caused a number of websites to break …

This month, Apple released the first beta of macOS Sonoma, which brings new features such as interactive widgets on the desktop, new tools for editing PDF files, and Game Mode. The update also comes with Safari 17, which brings improvements to Apple’s web browser. But if you don’t want to wait to try out the new Safari, Apple has now updated Safari Technology Preview with some of the features coming with macOS Sonoma.

Safari is Apple’s web browser that comes pre-installed on every Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Even so, it lost the second place to Microsoft Edge in the ranking of the world’s most popular web browsers last year. But new data shows that Apple’s web browser has again overtaken Edge and is back in second place in the ranking of the world’s most-used desktop web browsers.

We may soon see entirely new iPhone browsers available, as both Google and Mozilla anticipate the end of Apple’s insistence that all iOS browsers use the same WebKit engine as Safari.

This will enable new versions of Chrome and Firefox to offer greater feature differentiation, and for the first time allow them to aim for faster performance than Safari …

Apple announced that they officially have two billion active iPhone users globally, which is an absurd amount of smartphones out in the wild. With each of those iPhones, whether you love it or hate it, they come pre-installed with Safari as the default browser. So if you have had an iPhone since 2007, that means that you have used Safari on an iPhone for over 15 years (unless you switched your browser). Most people are not aware of how much you can do within Safari; here are some features that I think every Safari user should know!

Apple’s Safari web browser has some filters to prevent users from accessing malicious websites, referred to as the “Fraudulent Website Warning.” In the United States and other countries, this warning is powered by the Google Safe Browsing service.

However, in China, these filters are managed by Tencent (a Chinese company), in addition to Google Safe Browsing. Now, Apple is expanding its use of Tencent Safe Browsing for websites from China to users in Hong Kong for the first time.