Apple Previews Big Update to Safari on Mac, Featuring New Privacy Tools, Built-in Translation, Improved Tabs, and More

[MacRumors]

Apple today during its WWDC keynote unveiled macOS Big Sur, which comes with a big update to Apple's native Safari browser.

Tabs have been redesigned to make navigating with Safari faster and more powerful by showing more tabs onscreen, displaying favicons by default to easily identify open tabs, and giving users a quick preview of a page by simply hovering over the tab.

A new Privacy Report button in the toolbar gives users insight into how sites are using their connection, and which trackers have been blocked. Users can choose when and which websites a Safari extension can work with, and tools like data breach password monitoring never reveal users' password information.

Extensions support for Safari is adopting new standard, so users can bring over extensions from other browsers. Users can also give extensions access just for a day, on a certain website, or for every website. In addition, the Mac App Store has a new extensions category that includes editorial spotlights and top charts.

Meanwhile, native-translation capabilities are now built into Safari, and the browser can detect and translate entire webpages from seven languages. There's also a customizable Start Page with background image support that extends to Reading List and iCloud Tabs.

Aside from features, Safari is getting faster. Apple says it now loads frequently visited sites an average of 50 percent faster than Chrome.

Article Link: Apple Previews Big Update to Safari on Mac, Featuring New Privacy Tools, Built-in Translation, Improved Tabs, and More

 

[Airforcekid]

Ill give it a try but I cant imagine it being faster than Brave plus I dont want to lose all my Chrome extensions.

 

[abrantes09]

Im switching... I was looking for a reason and I've been given a reason...this is epic

 

[VotingforSnoopy16]

The iMac hasn't been redesigned in twelve years and you're talking about updates to Rosetta? 🤔

 

[velocityg4]

If it does indeed get better extension support I may try it out. Maybe this will pry me away from Firefox and Chrome.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Not switching. Meaning I am already on Safari as my primary browser. Looking forward to these additional improvements.

 

[V-l-a-d-i-m-i-r]

Folks honestly new Safari is the sole thing I truly enjoyed during today's conference. Seems like Apple did listen to user feedback this time. While in another thread (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...erformance-within-the-next-two-years.2242180/) I right now can feel there are more questions than answers For example, the fact Apple may now remove Boot Camp completely... Isn't fun! There's huge Boot Camp users community, literally tens of millions of people, I know that for sure because I've been long involved in alternate Boot Camp drivers development for this community (Trackpad++ drivers for example). Oops, getting offtopic a bit. Going back to that hot thread

 

[spinedoc77]

I wish they would bring back Safari for Windows. Apple has to realize that many of us loyal customers also use Windows devices.

 

[Aichon]

Ill give it a try but I cant imagine it being faster than Brave plus I dont want to lose all my Chrome extensions.

As a fellow Brave user on Mac, Safari has been faster than Brave all along, but speed also stopped being a meaningful metric several years ago (i.e. all modern browsers hit "good enough"), so it frankly doesn't matter, other than inasmuch being faster would suggest better efficiency/battery life.

While it wasn't entirely clear if they were referring to adding support for WebExtensions or just "web extensions", if it is the former, that's the same API used by Firefox, which might mean nearly instantaneous access to thousands of extensions from the Firefox ecosystem, which would be huge. I gave Safari (and Chrome, Firefox, Vivaldi, and Opera) a fair chance a year or two back before landing on Brave, but I would love to revisit that decision, given that Brave is far from perfect.

And hey, with them adding broader extension support, I may finally be able to bring back that ancient extension I once wrote without needing to pay the developer fee. *fingers crossed*

 

[MEJHarrison]

The iMac hasn't been redesigned in twelve years and you're talking about updates to Rosetta? 🤔

One of the interesting things I picked up today watching the video is that Apple seems to have many different people working on many different projects. It doesn't appear, as some think, to be a single group of people working on 1 project at a time. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they have an entire department that handles artwork like emojis instead of it just being the developers doing that work. Who can say?

It's entirely possible those two things you mentioned are handled by completely different groups of people. And I would further guess that progress, or lack thereof, on one team probably doesn't affect the progress of the other team in this particular case.

You could literally have said "The iMac hasn't been redesigned in twelve years and you're talking about..." and stuck anything they said there today at the end and it would fit just as well. One has nothing to do with the other.

 

[V-l-a-d-i-m-i-r]

I wish they would bring back Safari for Windows. Apple has to realize that many of us loyal customers also use Windows devices.

Yes, I totally agree.

 

[luvbug]

Folks honestly new Safari is the sole thing I truly enjoyed during today's conference. Seems like Apple did listen to user feedback this time. While in another thread (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...erformance-within-the-next-two-years.2242180/) I right now can feel there are more questions than answers For example, the fact Apple may now remove Boot Camp completely... Isn't fun! There's huge Boot Camp users community, literally tens of millions of people, I know that for sure because I've been long involved in alternate Boot Camp drivers development for this community (Trackpad++ drivers for example). Oops, getting offtopic a bit. Going back to that hot thread

Perhaps you missed the part about Big Sur having built-in virtualization support? They mentioned it in a Linux context, but Win10 *should* work, if Linux works. Although, ofc, you may *need* an actual bootable windows environment, not just a VM one.

 

[dannys1]

The only thing left I wish it has is containers like Firefox. It's Facebook container extension is great for keeping that bugger encased, but it's also great to have multiple sign ins to different websites and be able to browse them all in one browser.

 

[warriors2017]

No more <Show Top Sites>?

 

[tgwaste]

finally tabs are fixed. now the question is how many display until they start hiding behind each other (which is the thing I hate most about safari)

 

[alexandr]

i've always loved safari. using chrome makes me a little sad.

 

[Dom_]

The only question is: will it do VP9? (Either natively or via the new extension functions.)

 

[CarlJ]

The only question is: will it do VP9? (Either natively or via the new extension functions.)

Via extensions, possibly. Natively? Highly unlikely. It's not a question of technical problems, it's opposing views on codecs between Apple and Google.

 

[Janichsan]

Perhaps you missed the part about Big Sur having built-in virtualization support? They mentioned it in a Linux context, but Win10 *should* work, if Linux works. Although, ofc, you may *need* an actual bootable windows environment, not just a VM one.

Note that they did not show or mention which version of Linux they ran in that VM. Debian has Arm-native versions.
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…displaying favicons by default to easily identify open tabs,…

So, like pretty much every other browser?

…and giving users a quick preview of a page by simply hovering over the tab.

So, like Chrome?

A new Privacy Report button in the toolbar gives users insight into how sites are using their connection, and which trackers have been blocked.

So, like Firefox?

…and tools like data breach password monitoring never reveal users' password information.

Again, like Firefox?

Extensions support for Safari is adopting new standard, so users can bring over extensions from other browsers.

So, Chrome and Firefox?

Meanwhile, native-translation capabilities are now built into Safari, and the browser can detect and translate entire webpages from seven languages.

So, like Chrome?

There's also a customizable Start Page with background image support…

So, like pretty much every other browser?

 

[macintologist]

Does this mean Reddit Enhancement Suite is coming back to Safari?

 

[827538]

Does this mean I'll finally have uBlock Origin on Safari?

 

[metaxaos]

Can someone check if it allows left alignment for bookmarks already?

 

[Janichsan]

@CarlJ: Explain how I'm wrong.

 

[cloughabunga]

Wait. How can it display "more tabs?" The current Safari tab bar runs the full width of the browser window, just like the new Safari.

Also, I really, really hope those obnoxious previews that hover under that tabs can be turned off.

 

[Philip_S]

From the Big Sur preview page:

Safari translation will be available in the US and Canada with support for English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese

That's an annoying restriction, especially since it sounds like they're doing on-device translation.

What would be really nice though would be if the text translation engine was exposed as a Service, so you could translate selected text in any application.