A question asked many times but not recently...

[donawalt]

So I made the mistake lol of installing Firefox along with Chrome and Safari on my Mac lol. Firefox seems really fast; but I think Chrome bench-marked faster. I don't have Chrome or Safari on my Mac or iPhone, so maybe there is a sync advantage to Safari. Bookmarks, Passwords etc. exported fine, each browser syncs between my 2 Macs fine. I don't think I have the reading list in Firefox that I do on Safari.

But my question is - which do you use, and why - Safari, Chrome, Firefox? I have been only using Chrome when Safari had an issue with a site, and had been strictly Safari.

I know there are other browsers, I am interested in opinions on these 3. I have searched and I know this has been discussed a lot - but not in at least 3 years that I have found, and things change a lot. Can you let me know your thoughts?

 

[dmr727]

People love to hate on Safari, but I find it to be fast and work well. I have Firefox installed just in case I encounter a site that has issues with Safari, but I find that to be next to never these days.

I try to use as little of Google as I can, so I'm not a Chrome guy.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Over the past few years or so, I’ve been using Safari, Chrome, and Brave routinely.

• Safari is my regular go-to, a good balance of what I believe to be fairly secure and decently compatible
• Chrome for YouTube, researching products (though I’ll typically purchase via Safari), and other Web tasks that seem most likely to be tracked cross sites.
• Brave for heavily ad-riddled sites and such that wouldn’t apply to the other scenarios as well as research I have no interest clogging up browsing history.

Firefox is mostly a far afterthought now, despite it being my only real auxiliary to Safari in the handful of years prior to the current habit.

The biggest frustration and reasoning for not going solely Brave or similar: the (corporate) Web presence is more and more retaliatory. That is, the more you prevent pop-ups, ads, scripts, and other useless and harmful additions from loading, the more you’re literally blocked from the Internet. I’ve experienced everything from sites showing 503 errors or otherwise ‘falsely’ not responding to pages partially loading and becoming seemingly when they detect VPNs or a browser refuses to load/run their background scripts, apps, etc.

 

[eRondeau]

I use Safari for 99% of my browsing and Microsoft Edge for the other 1%. I don’t like how Chrome ties into MacOS and auto updates without notice. I actually really like Edge… I think it’s based on Chromium but seems to play nice with MacOS.

 

[webbga]

I use Safari for everyday use. Once in a long while I will have something that does not play well with Safari and I will briefly use Chrome, but I do not like Chrome. It is invasive and everytime I bring something up on Google it wants me to switch to Chrome.

 

[MBAir2010]

safari does work well with m1 Macs, But for me,
Safari won't launch some webpages as Vivaldi always does.
also recording or downloading a video is impossible with safari.
I use safari for clarity and better IU but the browsers is too stubborn at times.

 

[Bazza1]

I use Firefox as my daily driver, but for a Chromium-based browser, I use (Norwegian-based) Vivaldi - now with (Swiss-based) Proton's VPN free and baked-in. Advantage here is that it's not Chrome, and as European products, far greater security and privacy than anything Google willing on offering.

Safari okay, but woefully a product of Apple's nanny mentality - we know best how you should use the internet. In that regard, I've also used Orion - which uses the web-kit and security guts of Safari, but also allows you to install many of the Chrome and Firefox extensions.

 

[TechRunner]

I use Safari almost exclusively, but on rare occasions when Safari has fits with a site I use Opera.

 

[fisherking]

safari mostly, chrome on occasion (ie when i hit a site that doesn't handle a form well in safari; still happens...)

 

[Fishrrman]

I use whatever browser I use (it's really that simple).

Safari, Brave, Orion, DuckDuckGo, iCab, WaterFox, Epic... and others.

The one browser I WILL NOT USE:
Chrome. Keep google stuff off of my Macs!

 

[ThrowerGB]

People love to hate on Safari, but I find it to be fast and work well. I have Firefox installed just in case I encounter a site that has issues with Safari, but I find that to be next to never these days.

I try to use as little of Google as I can, so I'm not a Chrome guy.

Ditto!

 

[ignatius345]

But my question is - which do you use, and why - Safari, Chrome, Firefox? I have been only using Chrome when Safari had an issue with a site, and had been strictly Safari.

Safari for nearly everything because of battery life and general ease of use. I use the Tab Groups feature constantly at work and it is massively helpful, syncs perfectly between my Macs and my iPhone.

I do keep Chrome around as a backup for a couple of sites I use at work that work better in Chrome. Aside from that, it's rarely used. Even Google Office apps work well for me in Safari -- with the exception of Google Meet, which gets cranky for me under Safari.

 

[Philip1]

I use Edge and have been really impressed by it.

I'm on Catalina and the last compatible version of Safari can't load a lot of content correctly (including MacRumours). I tried Orion but it suffered from the same problems.

Edge's been great. Low RAM footprint and fairly simple to set up as I had Safari. No noticeable speed difference. It picked up my bookmarks without having to export them first. It does handoff with Safari on my iPhone.
Only thing I couldn't work out was how to carry over my passwords, so I load Safari and dip into the preferences when I encounter one that I've not used with Edge before.

An incidental benefit is that my bookmarks and browser settings can now be shared with my Windows laptop.

 

[svenmany]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/whats-your-default-browser.2447753/

Current thread.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

Safari exclusively for sync to the iP but do have Edge installed if there's issues.

 

[Gregg2]

I use Safari for everything except when there's an issue with a web site. Whenever I've inquired, I've been told that "our site is optimized for Chrome".

 

[BigBlur]

Safari for personal use and Edge for work (my personal bookmarks are synced to my Apple Account; my work bookmarks are synced to my Microsoft Work Account). Edge is also useful for when I want to spoof my geolocation for certain sites/web apps via the built-in tools.