Best alternative to Safari?

[iRock1]

Overall I like Safari. I've tried Firefox, Chrome and Opera for a brief period of time and still, for design, features (love and use Reader View and iCloud Tabs all the time) and ease of use, I like Apple's browser best.

However, there are two things with Safari that are seriously bothering me:

1) It doesn't seem to be compatible with a lot of things. WhatsApp Web forces me to change browser in order to be able to send voice messages. Want to download something from Mega? Idem.

2) Safari really sucks at handling GIFs. I browse certain forums from time to time, where a lot of GIFs are displayed at the same time, and Safari gets impossibly slow. Firefox or Chrome (or Opera, which is based on Chromium, so it would be the same on that regard)? Smooth as butter.

Bonus: I hate Safari's stupidly short address bar.

So what is your choice and why?

(I know Chrome is the most popular choice, but I can't stand its fugly interface nor the fact that is made by Google—and you never know what sort of dirty trick they might have under the hood when it comes to privacy and Google.)

 

[Pakaku]

Always Firefox for me. Mostly for a few niche addons, and for a lack of better alternatives.

 

[DeltaMac]

...Safari's stupidly short address bar

(?)
You mean the short addresses displayed in the bar?
You can change that in Safari Preferences/Advanced/Short Search Field - Check the box "Show Full Website address"

I have started using iCab again, after several years using other browsers.
There's also the old OmniWeb (not so old, just updated recently for better El Cap support)

 

[spitf1r3]

Have you tried Safari Technical Preview?

 

[ghanwani]

In terms of UI, Chrome is the best for me. I've tried to stop using it, but simply cannot.

 

[iRock1]

(?)
You mean the short addresses displayed in the bar?
You can change that in Safari Preferences/Advanced/Short Search Field - Check the box "Show Full Website address

I've always had that option enabled. Still, I'm referring to the actual size of the bar, not the length of the address displayed there.

Have you tried Safari Technical Preview?

I tried it, but it has the same problems than Safari.

In terms of UI, Chrome is the best for me. I've tried to stop using it, but simply cannot.

That huge and ugly toolbar doesn't concur.

 

[KALLT]

I don’t like any other browsers, to be perfectly frank. Firefox didn’t perform that well for years and I find the UI rather unintuitive and foreign. Chrome and Chromium fit better into OS X, but the fact that Google creeps more and more into it, both in terms of functionality (Google services, Chrome apps, own notification system) and design (Material Design is becoming more prevalent), really bothers me. I have never liked Opera, on any system. It is slow, choppy and the UI is too cluttered. Vivaldi inherits the same problems, in addition to the far too many pointless customisation options.

Safari just always had that certain elegance and has fantastic performance for more than three years now. I also like that I barely have to customise anything about it, because most default settings work well for me. In the other big browsers, I still have to hunt for privacy and security options (Chrome and Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 are the worst). I personally wish that Safari would get better cookie management, more tracking/fingerprinting protection and better support for HTML5. Maybe more options for tabbed browsing and bookmarks, but that’s about it.

 

[steve62388]

Bonus: I hate Safari's stupidly short address bar.

There is a Safari extension that permanently displays the full URL in the bottom left of your window. I used to run it but I can't think for the life of me what it is called now. Somebody else may be able to come up with the name.

 

[RIZZO124]

I use safari for everything except to log into the us patent office EFS system which never works in safari but works fine in chrome and even better in Firefox.