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Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 166 With Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements

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Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced in March 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari.

Safari-Technology-Preview-Feature.jpg

Safari Technology Preview release 166 includes bug fixes and performance improvements for Web Inspector, CSS, JavaScript, Popover, Media, MSE, Web API, and Accessibility.

The current Safari Technology Preview release is version 16.4 and is compatible with machines running macOS Ventura and macOS Monterey.

The Safari Technology Preview update is available through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences or System Settings to anyone who has downloaded the browser. Full release notes for the update are available on the Safari Technology Preview website.

Apple's aim with Safari Technology Preview is to gather feedback from developers and users on its browser development process. Safari Technology Preview can run side-by-side with the existing Safari browser and while designed for developers, it does not require a developer account to download.

Article Link: Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 166 With Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/03/23/apple-releases-safari-technology-preview-166/
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Reactions: sorgo †
Hopefully they fix the issue with dragging tabs in and out of a Window where the original tab persists in the original window. As a web developer it's downright annoying, and has existed far too long. Apple stop being sloppy.
 
maybe it fixes autofill on forms still not working. been broken since 13.1, earlier vers on some sites.
 
soyazul said:
Please Apple improves the Youtube experience on Safari on Intel Macs. Currently, it is an awful experience.
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Even on an M1Pro the Youtube experience is like dog crap. Ok, maybe not sooooo bad, but sometimes extremely slow and hourly freezes that affect all tabs haunt me. - Chrome is so very much faster and quicker on loading web content. It just needs the second more on every request in safari, but because of the Passkey limitations, Chrome is just not a daily driver option for me. - add. many features in Safari are great and make it awesome to use, but the performance is just "slow" in real world usage.
 
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Used to use STP on my 2012 Catalina Mac mini until it became unsupported. I was satisfied with it.

Got a new top spec m2 mba and installed STP. Crashed so much I uninstalled it.

Regular safari on the m2 mba with same usage hasn’t crashed once.
 
Now on Yahoo Mail there is no option anymore in the Spam folder to add a sender to the blocked list, while it is still available while using firefox
Safari has turned into a real dumpster fire
 
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Reactions: sorgo †
soyazul said:
Please Apple improves the Youtube experience on Safari on Intel Macs. Currently, it is an awful experience.
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The experience on Chrome isn't too much better either - realised you've clicked on the wrong video on the front page so you click the back button only to find that the whole page has been refreshed resulting in the video you were interested in disappearing. In setting you disable previewing when the cursor hovers over the thumb name - go back to the main page and it still previews. I always thought it was Safari but it appears that YouTube is just plain buggy - if a bug appears on Safari but not on CHrome I can almost guarantee you'll see a different bug appear when using Chrome.

DeLaSoul said:
Where did AV1 codec support go? It was in there, now it’s pulled?
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it is still marked experimental - I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing it announced at WWDC this year. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a lot of focus on improving the efficiency of the CODEC so that when it is launched the best possible experience is delivered for end users.
 
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Realityck said:
It’s in develop menu part is software codecs, rest is hardware decoding based. It’s experimental and YouTube doesn’t support it yet. I did see it in the original beta 1 notes against safari 16.4. See this post
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Does this mean that current chips secretly already have AV1 hardware decoding on board, or do we have to wait for M3?
 
DeLaSoul said:
Does this mean that current chips secretly already have AV1 hardware decoding on board, or do we have to wait for M3?
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This is an example of Apple likely able to support AV1 hardware decode just like VP9 finally was enabled. The M1 I think is capable, certainly M1 Pro/Max and newer. But it appears Apple wishes to conceal AS SoC AV1 decoding until further into the future. Safari 16.4 beta 2 and beta 3 had that change where they failed to give host’s permission to extensions that would cause a panic on M1 macs They corrected this blunder in beta 4, and RC is ok too. AV1 is being pushed by Netflix and YouTube, so eventually they will cave just like VP9 finally worked with YouTube on tvOS 2nd gen 4K using A12 Bionic, iPadOS, and MacOS using M1 is significant more capable then the A12 Bionic.
 
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