The best browser for your Mac is the one that comes with your Mac. Safari is faster and more energy efficient than other browsers, so sites are more responsive and your notebook battery lasts longer between charges. Built-in privacy features help keep your browsing your business. Handy tools help you save, find and share your favourites. And Safari works with iCloud to let you browse seamlessly across all your devices.
With an incredibly fast JavaScript engine and energy-saving technologies, Safari is a faster, more enjoyable way to explore the web.
Safari is engineered specifically for Mac, so it takes advantage of the powerful technologies built into every one. And Safari offers native support for Netflix and plays HTML5 video everywhere it's available. So compared with Chrome and Firefox, you can browse for up to two hours longer1 and watch Netflix videos up to four hours longer.2
browsing compared to Chrome and Firefox
watching Netflix videos compared to Chrome and Firefox
Browsing with Safari is incredibly fast thanks to advanced JavaScript engine optimisations that make websites and web applications feel snappier.
JetStream: JavaScript performance on advanced web applications3
Speedometer: Web application responsiveness4
MotionMark: Rendering performance of animated content5
JSBench: JavaScript performance on popular websites6
Privacy and security aren’t just something you should hope for — they’re something you should expect. That’s why features to help protect your privacy and keep your Mac secure are built into Safari. For example, Safari gives you the option to search the Internet using DuckDuckGo — a search engine that doesn’t track you — as a built-in option.
The web pages you visit often leave cookies from third-party websites. These cookies can be used to track where you go on the web, target you with ads or create a profile of your online activities. Safari was the first browser to block these cookies by default. And by default it also prevents third-party websites from leaving data in your cache, local storage or databases.
When you use Private Browsing, Safari doesn’t remember the pages you visit, your search history or your AutoFill information. Each tab in a Private Browsing window is isolated from the others, so websites you view in one tab can’t see your cookies from websites in another tab. This helps prevent websites you’re logged in to from tracking you as you browse.
Sandboxing provides built-in protection against malicious code and malware by restricting what websites can do. And because Safari runs web pages in separate processes, any harmful code you come across in one page is confined to a single browser tab, so it can’t crash the whole browser or access your data.
Safari helps protect you against fraudulent Internet sites and those that harbour malware — before you visit them. If a website looks suspicious, Safari prevents it from loading and warns you.
Not only does Safari come on every Mac, it comes on every iPhone, iPad and iPod touch too. And thanks to iCloud, your passwords, bookmarks, history, tabs and Reading List are always up to date no matter which device you’re using.
iCloud Keychain securely stores your user names, passwords and credit card numbers and keeps them up to date on your trusted devices. So you can easily sign in to your favourite websites and quickly make online purchases. And everything is protected with robust 256-bit AES encryption.
With Bookmarks in Safari, your favourite sites are always close at hand. Bookmark a web page on your Mac and it automatically appears on all your iCloud-connected devices.
With Tab view, the last websites you had open on your Mac are available in Safari on your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch — and vice versa. So you can go from one device to another without having to search for the web pages you were reading.
Save web pages you want to read later simply by adding them to your Reading List. Then view them on any of your iCloud-connected devices — even if you’re not connected to the Internet.
Features in Safari help you surf smarter and easily manage and share what you find.
Keep websites you visit often — like your webmail, Facebook page or Twitter feed — open, up to date and easily accessible by pinning them. They’ll stay active in the background and they’ll stay put on the left side of your tab bar.
Play video from a web page to your TV with Apple TV — without showing everything else on your desktop. Just click the AirPlay icon that appears on compatible web videos and you can watch your video on the big screen.
Float a video window from Safari over your desktop or a full-screen app. Play the video in any corner of the desktop and resize it to see more or less of what’s behind it. So you can catch up on your favourite show while you catch up on email. Or watch the big game while playing a game yourself.
Want to stop the music without hunting for the tab it’s coming from? You can mute it right from the Smart Search field. If you’re listening to audio in one tab and another website starts to play, you can mute the one you don’t want to hear. And if what you really want is silence, you can mute all audio from your browser too.
With Spotlight built into every Mac, you’re never far from the information you want. As you type in the Smart Search field, you’ll see Safari suggestions from sources like Wikipedia, news sites, Maps, iTunes, movie listings, weather, stocks and sports.7
Share anything you come across on the web without leaving Safari. Just click the Share button, then choose how you want to send it off. Use Mail, Messages or AirDrop or add it to a note. Tweet or post to Facebook and even include comments and locations. A single sign-on sets up sharing to Facebook and Twitter, so you only need to sign in once.
View news stories and other articles in a layout that’s optimised for easy reading. Reader lets you focus on the text without being distracted by ads. You can customise your view by selecting your font size and style, and choose Sepia and Night themes.
Safari is built on WebKit, the industry-leading open source rendering engine. It includes powerful built-in tools, like Web Inspector, that let developers create advanced web applications. And it continues to support technologies that enable innovation on the web.
Safari Extensions are a great way to bring new features to Safari. Customise your browsing experience by adding your favourite extensions.