Is Safari again the fastest browser for Mac at the moment?

[VitoBotta]

I just got a new M2 Pro mini so I ran Speedometer 2 on Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge and Firefox. Safari scored 418 while the others were quite lower with Firefox the slowest. All extensions had been disabled in each browser and the tests performed in the same session (I have a ton of apps and a virtual machine running, not sure how much this could affect browsers).

So is Safari again the fastest? Have been using Brave lately but wondering if I should switch back to Safari.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

If you’re using only Speedometer test then it sounds like it performed the best for you. At the end of the day it’s just another benchmark and ultimately it should be what you value most in a browser since any modern one isn’t usually noticeable faster than another.

 

[VitoBotta]

I don't really use any "advanced" features or features specific to the single browsers to be honest. I only care about the speed

 

[eduardodfj]

That's interesting. I get 342 with Safari, 211 with Brave and 132 with Firefox.

HOWEVER, in normal browsing, Brave is noticeably faster than Safari, and more or less on par with Firefox, which also is clearly faster than Safari. Brave and Firefox are more or less similar, with Brave being maybe a bit smoother.

In all three cases, with a similar set of extensions, i.e. with the setup I'm going to use. I'm on the Sonoma beta but it was the same with Ventura.

 

[VitoBotta]

That's interesting. I get 342 with Safari, 211 with Brave and 132 with Firefox.

HOWEVER, in normal browsing, Brave is noticeably faster than Safari, and more or less on par with Firefox, which also is clearly faster than Safari. Brave and Firefox are more or less similar, with Brave being maybe a bit smoother.

In all three cases, with a similar set of extensions, i.e. with the setup I'm going to use. I'm on the Sonoma beta but it was the same with Ventura.

I am using Brave now because I can use it also on Kali ARM on my M2 Pro mini. I tried Firefox again yesterday and it's just slow for me. I am surprised it seems faster for you because for me it's the opposite.

 

[VitoBotta]

That's interesting. I get 342 with Safari, 211 with Brave and 132 with Firefox.

HOWEVER, in normal browsing, Brave is noticeably faster than Safari, and more or less on par with Firefox, which also is clearly faster than Safari. Brave and Firefox are more or less similar, with Brave being maybe a bit smoother.

In all three cases, with a similar set of extensions, i.e. with the setup I'm going to use. I'm on the Sonoma beta but it was the same with Ventura.

I found a feature of Firefox that might win me over: containers!!!

This feature looks perfect for when I do penetration testing because I can use the proxy (like Burp Suite or Zap) only for specific tabs! I love it. I am gonna try and use Firefox for a few days as main browser now to see how I like it. Speed wise maybe my perception is too affected by benchmark numbers, so it's probably worth trying it with real world usage.

 

[shenfrey]

I don't know about the fastest, but it is certainly the most energy efficient for me which pretty much seals the deal.

 

[woolypants]

I don't know about the fastest, but it is certainly the most energy efficient for me which pretty much seals the deal.

Energy efficiency, true picture-in-picture support, and Keychain support. This keeps me locked into Safari even though I'd probably use a Chrome-based browser otherwise (better compatibility, useful extensions, and everyday real-world performance).

 

[VitoBotta]

I have been using Firefox for a few days now and I really like it so far. The containers feature is dope and like I mentioned previously it works great when pentesting web apps because I get use Burp Suite only with specific tabs using the Container Proxy extension. Love it.

As for the speed I haven't really seen any noticeable difference compared to others apart from the benchmark numbers. Maybe the practical difference is even smaller given i am running on M2 Pro

 

[surf4peace]

Firefox has slowed to a crawl for me. Safari works for me at the moment.

 

[surf4peace]

Interestingly performance has improved materially over the past few days.