I don't really know about all the details of those metrics but I know one thing: Safari is smooth. Actually it was just perfect in the previous years too for me anyway. It just works and works super-efficient. That's why I use it. The only reason I have Chrome installed is to test my websites with Chrome and use MetaMask.
TBH I never understood why people use Chrome on a Mac unless there is a specific extension or site that doesn't work with Safari.
Also, not using anything from Google is a big plus for me to use Safari (or Firefox for the record) anyway.
You can't do proper adblocking (e.g. uBlock Origin) on Safari. That's why I don't really use it except when on battery and out travelling - and even then I'll often avoid using Safari since ads are so awful. Yes, I've tried the Safari adblockers, they suck. As far as I can tell they do marginally more at best than a DNS block.
Once you can't use uBlock Origin with Chrome due to the proposed Manifest V3, Firefox will be the only real option.
This was one of the main reasons we built the Orion browser [1].
Lightweight and faster than Safari in benchmarks, same WebKit engine and able to run Chrome and Firefox extensions out of the box, including uBlock Origin. Still in beta and you can try it for free. It is zero telemetry and completely user supported through Orion+ subscription. Has a very active feedback forum at OrionFeedback.org.
Same. In my experience it’s only marginally less effective than uBlock Origin. You do have to open the app to make sure the rules are loaded once in a blue moon though.
That said if uBlock is a requirement, there’s Orion[0] which is a WebKit-based browser that supports both the Chrome and Firefox version of uBO on both macOS and iOS.
To add to the other responses here, I won't deny the lack of uBlock Origin was a painful point for me going all in with safari on Mac; even the previous broken incarnation that had to be manually built and was a bit buggy was still fantastic compared to non-uBlockOrigin alternatives.
A small combination of user scripts for YouTube specific blocking with TamperMonkey and Wipr+KaBlock+1Block seem to work, with only Wipr requiring a purchase.
But I really wish Apple would walk back the position on how ad blocking runs in safari, as uBlock Origin made the argument for Safari much more convenient.
It is good though that a small number of user scripts and extensions get it "close enough"; I mainly miss element zapping/blocking from uBlock Origin at this point.
As the author of the linked article, there's over 250,000 users of our Safari-exclusive ad blocker[1] with few complaints.
It is able to block all ads, trackers and annoyances that users encounter. Including all YouTube ads.
Don't disagree that there are some limitations with more contemporary ad blocking approaches but they do the job for most users needs. These approaches will likely continue to evolve and include necessary capabilities to do more in the future.
I just went to give it a try, as the website copy says "Free from the App Store" and "optional Pro subscription", however, I was disappointed that the pro subscription is required to give it a try. It just says "Magic Lasso is disabled" and requires me to start a 1 month free trial. Really feels bait-and-switch.
I uninstalled it without subscribing, as my personal feeling on it is if you don't believe in the product that you have to, frankly, mislead me before installing it, it's not worth trying. I'd feel very different if the website was clear on the pro subscription requirement.
good to hear, thanks for the resources. Do you know if Apple has made any specific statements or commitments to continuing to support v2 for the foreseeable future?
I've read that uBlock Origin remains difficult to circumvent by anti-adblock techniques employed on sites today, and the sites where ads are blocked by Safari's content blockers simply haven't made the effort yet. I don't have any experience in this area, and would love someone who does to chime in.
Not exactly; this is a bit of semantics, but "Native Advertising" is different than traditional advertising, and Native Advertising might be _an_ answer to ad-blocking, but it's by no means _the_ answer.
Native Advertising seems to be at this stage fairly tame, but I don't hold any belief that it can't/won't change. If it stays at the level where the most you get is 30 seconds of a YouTube video dedicated to ads and occasional ad-only articles, in my opinion it's fine. It's still annoying, but it's not the immediately disruptive experience that more traditional web advertising are, and with YouTube at least, it seems many of the creators have settled on having predictable timing for their ad segment, either right after their intro or right at the end, and I think this is a healthy way of handling it. It's not interrupting the actual videos typically, the advertisers get their precious views and tracking, and the creators get paid. With native advertising articles, it's fairly fast to recognize that there's no real information in an article and to just skip it; if the authors still get paid and the advertisers are satisfied with the screen time, then so be it, I'm ultimately not too annoyed by such a situation as I don't get interrupted by ads.
I hate advertising in general, but with the above, I would call it acceptable for the time being; I haven't even bothered with the YouTube ad segment skip plugins/scripts for such items.
I have to use Chrome on a Mac because Safari refuses to support multiple profiles. I'm a fan of compartmentalization, so my side-business saved passwords are different than my personal saved passwords. Apple would prefer that I create two separate accounts on my Mac (and the annoyance of syncing dotfiles between the two), but Chrome just lets me switch between users seamlessly.
It seems like such an easy feature to add, but I'd bet there are Apple politics in play preventing Safari from adding this feature.
I’m using Brave for the same reason - compartmentalisation via profiles (“People”). Keep LinkedIn and other data vacuums quarantined, thank you very much.
Personally, I like Chrome's UI much more than Safari, and also enjoy the devtools UI much better. Also like many devs, I use the most popular browser by default so I can design for the majority of users (realizing how this may offend some of you...).
Indeed, this worked well for the sites that targeted IE, and I’ve seen enough sites saying variations on “designed for ie/chrome” to know you’re not alone in that belief.
It's very easy to use and switch between profiles on Chrome. Firefox is not as good here, but at least they have container tabs.
Regarding extensions, it's not only the number of extensions available, but what they're capable of doing and the process of discovering them. Sure, you can buy some extension to block ads, but it's still not as capable as the free and open source uBlock Origin. You can hide cookies popups, but probably not auto click the "deny" button like some extensions do.
Safari is also a bit too simple for me. I like things that "just work", but also have some control over things. Chrome offers a good compromise, I think. Firefox gives you more power, but their UI isn't as polished as Chrome.
I like Safari's power usage but since I got a M1 MBP, I don't worry about the battery life that much anymore, so the higher drain from Chrome/Firefox doesn't affect me.
This is me down to every single detail, including about testing and using MetaMask.
To add, Apple’s native support for security tools such as iCloud Keychain, privacy relay, hide my email etc makes it that much more compelling to continue to use Safari.
* I also regularly use Windows and Linux. Chrome is familiar and have synchronized across all of them.
* I need a proxy extension to bypass China’s network restrictions. The extension was not available on Safari (I don’t bother to check now).
* uBlock Origin is more powerful than Safari’s adblockers. For example, uBO can skip the 90 second long advertisement in the front of some Chinese video site.
My only problem with Safari is the age old algorithm they use for audio pitch correction on sped up videos, i.e. any videos you speed up (i watch at 2.3x) has the audio extremely tinny. Chrome and Firefox don't have this problem.
I've been using Safari for years now and I still think it's poor in many areas.
URL autocompletion is an absolute joke. Detaching tabs has been browser-crashingly-bad for about a year. Still no way to tell whether the current page has already been bookmarked. Performance is pitiful on large pages (e.g. long PRs on GitHub) to the point typing is takes whole seconds longer. Pointless "apps" for web extensions, which make it unnecessarily complex for non-Apple developers to publish web extensions for Safari.
I only use it because it's not Google’s and because it integrates better than Firefox. If I didn't have an iPhone I would never think of using Safari on Mac.
TBH I never understood why people use Chrome on a Mac unless there is a specific extension or site that doesn't work with Safari.
Also, not using anything from Google is a big plus for me to use Safari (or Firefox for the record) anyway.