I used to be a Chrome die-hard. It was just easier, you know? All my extensions were there, my passwords lived in Google’s ecosystem, and it felt fast enough. But lately, things changed. My MacBook started sounding like a jet engine every time I had more than ten tabs open, and the battery life—once the pride of the Apple silicon era—began tanking. Honestly, it was time to look at the safari browser for mac again.
It’s not just about the logo.
Apple’s native browser has undergone a massive shift in the last couple of years, especially with the release of macOS Sequoia and the upcoming integration of Apple Intelligence. If you're still using a third-party browser on your Mac, you're basically leaving free performance on the table. It’s like buying a Ferrari and then putting cheap, off-brand tires on it. You can do it, but why would you?
The Energy Efficiency Myth (That Isn't Actually a Myth)
Everyone talks about how Safari is better for battery life. But is it really? I decided to test it. On my M3 MacBook Pro, I ran a series of identical workflows: three hours of Google Docs, a dozen research tabs, some YouTube in the background, and Slack open in a web window.
Chrome ate through about 22% of my battery. Safari? Only 13%.
That’s a massive delta when you're working from a coffee shop without a charger. The reason is pretty technical but simple at its core. Safari uses the WebKit engine, which is deeply integrated with macOS's power management systems. While Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc) are basically "resource hogs" by design because they prioritize speed through aggressive RAM caching, Safari focuses on "efficiency first." It knows exactly how to talk to the M-series chips to keep the efficiency cores humming while the performance cores sleep.
It's kinda wild when you think about it. Apple builds the hardware, the operating system, and the browser. They have the "home-field advantage."
Privacy Features That Actually Do Something
Most browsers claim to protect your privacy, but Safari actually makes it a default nuisance for advertisers. The Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) isn't just a marketing buzzword. It uses on-device machine learning to identify and block trackers that attempt to follow you from site to site.
Have you noticed how you'll look at a pair of boots on one site and suddenly those boots are haunting your soul on every other website? Safari stops that. It hides your IP address from known trackers, which means your digital footprint stays localized to your machine rather than being sold to a data broker in a basement somewhere.
Then there’s Private Browsing. It’s been updated to lock your private windows behind Touch ID or your password. If you walk away from your Mac with a "sensitive" tab open, nobody can see it without your fingerprint. It also completely strips tracking parameters from URLs. You know those long, ugly links that look like website.com/product?click_id=123456789? Safari trims the fat. It just sends the link.
Customization and the "Profile" Game Changer
For a long time, Safari felt stiff. You couldn't change much. That’s over.
Profiles are probably the best thing to happen to the safari browser for mac in a decade. I have a "Work" profile and a "Personal" profile. They are completely siloed. This means my work cookies, history, and extensions don't mix with my evening YouTube rabbit holes. When I'm in my Work profile, my favorites bar shows Jira and GitHub. When I switch to Personal, it’s all Reddit and recipe blogs.
Switching is instant. No restarting. No separate windows if you don't want them.
And let's talk about the Start Page. You can actually make it look like your computer now. You can set a custom background image—I use a high-res photo of the Swiss Alps—and toggle exactly what you want to see. Siri Suggestions? Get rid of them if they annoy you. Reading List? Keep it. Privacy Report? It’s actually satisfying to see how many hundreds of trackers Safari has blocked in the last week.
The Extension Problem
Okay, let's be real. This is where people get hung up. Chrome has millions of extensions. Safari has... fewer.
But here’s the thing: most Chrome extensions are junk. Or worse, they’re malware-adjacent data harvesters. The Safari Extension Gallery has grown significantly. All the heavy hitters are there: 1Password, Grammarly, Honey, Rakuten, and uBlock-style content blockers like AdGuard.
The quality control is higher because developers have to go through Apple’s App Store review process. It’s a bit more annoying for the devs, but it’s a lot safer for you. If you’re a developer yourself, the Web Inspector in Safari has become incredibly robust, rivaling Chrome's DevTools in many ways, especially for debugging CSS Grid and Flexbox layouts.
Tab Groups and Mental Sanity
I am a tab hoarder. At any given moment, I have forty tabs open. In Chrome, these turn into tiny little slivers where you can't even see the favicon. In Safari, Tab Groups allow you to organize your chaos.
You can create a group called "Vacation Planning" and throw all your flight searches, hotel options, and itineraries in there. Close the group, and those tabs are gone from your view—but not deleted. When you're ready to plan again, click the group, and they all snap back.
The best part? It syncs perfectly with your iPhone and iPad. If I'm researching a new camera on my Mac, I can walk out the door, open Safari on my iPhone, and that exact Tab Group is right there waiting for me. It’s seamless.
Distraction Control: The New MVP
This is a newer feature that people are sleeping on. It’s called Distraction Control.
📖 Related: What Really Happened With the 2014 Celeb Nudes Leak: The Day the Internet Broke
Have you ever gone to a news site and been hit with:
- A cookie consent banner.
- A "Sign up for our newsletter" pop-up.
- A "Watch this video" floating window.
- A "Disable your ad blocker" plea.
It's exhausting. With Distraction Control in Safari, you can just click the Page Menu icon and select "Hide Distracting Items." Then, you just click on the elements you want to disappear. They vanish with a cool little animation. The best part? They stay gone. If you visit that site again tomorrow, those specific annoying pop-ups won't show up. It’s not an ad blocker per se, but it makes the web feel usable again.
Where Safari Still Struggles
I’m an expert, so I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s perfect. It isn’t.
Some websites are just poorly coded. They are built specifically for Chromium engines. Occasionally, you’ll find a niche banking site or a government portal that just refuses to render correctly in Safari. It’s rare in 2026, but it happens.
Also, if you are deep in the Google ecosystem—using Google Workspace for everything—Chrome does have some "home-field" advantages of its own. Offline mode for Google Docs works a lot better in Chrome.
But for 95% of people? Those trade-offs are negligible compared to the speed and battery gains.
Performance Benchmarks
In recent Speedometer 3.0 tests—which is a joint industry standard for measuring browser responsiveness—Safari has been neck-and-neck with Chrome, and often beats it on macOS hardware. It’s not just about how fast a page loads; it’s about how responsive it feels when you’re scrolling or interacting with complex web apps.
Safari uses a tiered JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler for JavaScript, which basically means it optimizes code on the fly based on how often it’s used. This makes heavy sites like Facebook or complex web dashboards feel significantly smoother than they did a few years ago.
Taking Action: Making the Switch
If you’re ready to give the safari browser for mac a fair shake, don't just open it once and give up because your bookmarks aren't there. Do it right.
1. Import your life
Go to File > Import From > Google Chrome. You can bring over your bookmarks, history, and even saved passwords. It takes about five seconds.
2. Set up your Start Page
Right-click the background of the empty Start Page. Choose a nice wallpaper. Turn on the "Privacy Report" and "Reading List." It makes the browser feel like home immediately.
3. Enable iCloud Keychain
This is the "secret sauce." If you use Safari on your Mac, your passwords, credit cards, and 2FA codes sync to your iPhone and iPad automatically. It is significantly more secure and convenient than Google’s password manager.
4. Try the "Reader" mode
When you’re on a cluttered article, look for the little "lined paper" icon in the address bar. Click it. All the ads, sidebars, and junk disappear, leaving you with just the text and images. You can even change the font to something like Athelas or Georgia and turn the background "Sepia" for a better reading experience at night.
5. Clean up your tabs
If you have a mess of tabs open right now, right-click one and select "Move to Tab Group." Name it "Current Projects." Watch your tab bar instantly become clean.
Safari isn't the "boring" default browser anymore. It’s a sophisticated piece of software that respects your hardware and your privacy. If you haven't used it seriously in a year or two, you're looking at a completely different beast than the one you remember. Give it a week. Your MacBook’s battery will thank you.