web browsers

Opera for iOS adds AI browsing

By

Now you have another option for using AI on your iPhone.
Now you have another option for using AI on your iPhone.
Photo: Opera

The Opera browser for iOS now features an artificially intelligent assistant created in collaboration with OpenAI. Opera calls it Aria, and says it “offers you a cutting-edge generative AI service for free.”

Similarly to other such tools, Opera integrated its AI into the browser and makes it free to use once you opt in.

Arc is a bold new web browser for Mac

By

Arc web browser
The Arc web browser is an all-new approach to the web.
Image: The Browser Company

Arc is a new kind of web browser that recently launched for Mac. It breaks free of the conventional tabbed window design with an all-new approach to organizing your internet activity without slowing you down along the way.

The top talent at The Browser Company, Arc’s developer, are taking bold approaches behind the scenes as well. The Windows version won’t be rewritten in C++ as with most Windows programs. Instead, the team is creating a custom toolkit to compile its code in Apple’s Swift language on Windows.

You can download Arc here for free from The Browser Company.

20 years of Safari: A visual history

By

Safari @ 20: Visual history.
Safari, the web browser of choice for Mac users since 2003.
Image: Cult of Mac

Over the past 20 years, Apple’s Safari web browser grew from a speedy young upstart to a polished professional. Released on this day in 2003 as a free download, Safari has been bundled with every version of the Mac operating system since.

Take a trip down memory lane as we look at how Safari has evolved over the years.

Safari becomes second browser to surpass 1 billion users

By

Safari now has more than 1 billion users.
Safari now has more than 1 billion users.
Photo: Apple
WWDC22 - Brought to you by CleanMyMac X

Apple’s Safari web browser recently topped 1 billion users, a new study indicates, making it the second browser to do so. Even so, it still lags well behind Google Chrome in popularity.

“1,006,232,879 internet users (19.16% of all internet users) now use the Safari browser, making it the second browser with over a billion users,” the Atlas VPN report said.

Devs come together to fight Apple’s ‘anti-competitive’ browser restrictions

By

iPadOS 15 review
It's about time!
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

A group of software engineers have joined forces to form the Open Web Advocacy (OWA), which will fight Apple’s “anti-competitive” web browser restrictions on iPhone and iPad.

The OWA says that Apple’s tight controls, which prevent third-party browsers from using their own engines on iOS, has stalled innovation for the past 10 years and “prevented web apps from taking off on mobile.”

Firefox and Chrome may start breaking websites soon

By

Websites may have issues with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox when each one hits version 100.
Websites may have issues with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox when each one hits version 100.
Photo: Google/Apple

Google, which makes Chrome, and Mozilla, which makes Firefox, warn that those web browsers are about to reach version 100. And that could mean major websites stop working properly with them.

Why? Coded to recognize two-digit version numbers, websites may have trouble identifying browsers with three-digit numbers.

Indie browser Opera runs twice as fast on M1 Macs

By

Opera browser
Opera has been available on the Mac since the mid-1990s.
Photo: Opera

The indie Opera browser, one of the oldest browsers still operating today, has been updated with native support for Apple Silicon Macs. The update means that the Opera browser now runs 2x faster on M1 Macs.

Opera first debuted on Mac way back in 1996. That’s approaching a decade before Safari made its debut. One of Opera’s first big claims to fame was that it made it easier to browse several web pages at once. Today, its big appeal is its minimalist aesthetic, innovative sidebar design, and (now faster than ever) performance.

Privacy-focused Brave browser adds native support for Apple Silicon

By

Brave
Brave is a speedy browser with a focus on privacy.
Photo: Brave

Brave, a privacy-oriented, Chromium-based web browser, has been updated to add native Apple Silicon support for first-gen M1 Macs.

Brave’s big claim to fame is that it blocks ads and website trackers by default. It also lets users compensate creators by sending them cryptocurrency contributions, called Basic Attention Tokens.

Download the first Microsoft Edge preview for macOS

By

Microsoft Edge for macOS
See what Microsoft is working on for macOS.
Screenshot: Cult of Mac

Microsoft has officially offered up its first Edge preview build for macOS.

The early release gives users a chance to see what Microsoft is working on for the Mac. It will be updated daily, so you’ll get to enjoy the changes and improvements as they happen (almost).

Apple Music gets the (unofficial) web player it needs

By

Apple Music web browser
Don't worry: All log-ins are via Apple's own authentication protocol.
Photo: Playapplemusic

Currently, there’s no officially sanctioned Apple way to play Apple Music in your web browser.

Enterprising software engineer Naveed Golafshani (a.k.a. Reddit user NaveedGol) has sprang to the rescue with a new — totally unofficial — web player at wwww.playapplemusic.com. It allows users to log in using Apple’s own authentication service, and then access their Apple Music libraries online.

Microsoft is bringing its Edge browser to iPhone

By

Microsoft Edge for iPhone
Get the latest version of Edge today.
Photo: Microsoft

Microsoft is bringing its Edge web browser to iPhone.

Windows users will feel right at home with its design, which looks as close as possible to that of Edge on the desktop. They will also enjoy the ability to send websites to their desktop when they want to view them on a larger screen.

Old iPhone exploit opens Nintendo Switch to jailbreaking

By

The Nintendo Switch's flexible Joy-Con controllers work just fine with a Mac (but not an iPhone).
The Switch might be jailbroken soon.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Nintendo Switch owners may soon be able to install third-party applications on the new gaming console thanks to an old Apple security flaw.

Although the Nintendo Switch doesn’t have a web browser, it uses Apple’s WebKit in order to render web pages. Noted iPhone jailbreaker qwertyoruiop recently discovered that the Switch could be easily hacked just by running the Pangu jailbreak tool for iOS on it.

Apple’s dev edition Safari brings future WebKit to your Mac

By

Safari will be kinder to MacBook Pro battery life.
Safari will be kinder to MacBook Pro battery life.
Photo: Apple

You can get a taste of the future of Safari on the Mac today, thanks to the release of the new Safari Technology Preview from Apple that gives regular users and developers an easy way to test new features and improvements that are coming soon to the web browser.

The new stand-alone app for OS X can be downloaded and used for free by anyone, and includes a cutting-edge version of the WebKit browser engine that is still in development. It’s a great way for web developers to get ahead on new features by testing them before they’re public.

Safari Technology Preview can be used side-by-side with the regular version of Safari to test for behavioral issues. It also includes new improvements for Web Inspector.

Here’s a list of the new features:

You can finally use Mozilla’s Firefox web browser on iOS

By

Firefox has finally made it to iOS.
Finally iPhone users can take advantage of Firefox.
Photo: Mozilla

As promised, Mozilla has finally brought Firefox to iOS devices around the world, after first appearing on Android more than three years ago.

The browser sports a private browsing mode, along with Google Chrome-style predictive searches and, of course, support for existing Firefox users — meaning that it’s easy to import your existing Firefox bookmarks, saved tabs, passwords, and web history over from your other devices.

Quickly Save Text From The Web To Your Desktop [OS X Tips]

By

Click to see animation.
Click to see animation.

Ever been surfing the web and find a nice bit of text you want to save? You can highlight the text with your cursor, copy, and paste into an app like Text Edit or Notes, sure, but maybe you just want a quick and easy way to put the bit of text aside to use later.

There’s no need to bother with opening an app and pasting in the text in OS X. Text clipping has been around for quite a while, but it’s a feature that we rarely use, for one reason or another.

Get Spotdox For Life: The Perfect Dropbox Companion [Deals]

By

CoM - spotdox_mainframe

Have you ever wanted to copy and send files to and from your Mac at any time…and from any device? Cult of Mac Deals has got you covered – thanks to Spotdox.

With Spotdox, you can access any file on your Mac from anywhere. Spotdox is an add on for Dropbox that gives you remote access to all of your files, any time, from any device so you’ll never get stuck without that important file or folder again. And Cult of Mac Deals is offering Spotdox for life for only $19 – a savings of 66% – during this limited time offer.

Three Ways To Easily Show Mobile Safari’s Address And Toolbar In iOS 7 [iOS Tips]

By

Bringing sexy back.
Bringing sexy back.

iOS 7 brings a ton of visual and interface changes to our favorite smart phone, not all of them easily intuited from general use.

One of these is the new fullscreen mobile Safari. The web browser’s address bar and toolbar (at the bottom) disappears when you’re browsing, and you might have figured out how to bring it back by accident, but not in a systematic way.

Nothing sucks the joy out of using a smartphone than not really being sure how to do something, so here are three ways to re-appear that sucker on your iPhone.

The Advantages Of Capturing Audio Streams On Your Mac [Deals]

By

CoM - audiorecord_mainframe_630x473-1

Notetaking comes in all forms, but it is essential when conducting interviews. I’ve done many, and no matter how good I am at using something like Evernote I always feel that much better having the original words in some format on my Mac. It means more accuracy when grabbing pull quotes. It means more notes that get retained for use in a story. Basically, it means I can focus on asking the questions and letting the technology handle what it can do best for me.

That’s why having an app that can handle that is such a huge asset. Whether it’s interviews, meetings, or even grabbing audio snippets directly from the web browser (like I did for my own TEDx talk), it’s an excellent tool to have at your disposal. (After all, even a conversation over Skype is essentially an audio stream, right?)

An example of this type of tool is Audio Recorder Pro (although it does focus on audio streaming more than anything else) and Cult of Mac Deals has it for $4.99 for a limited time.

Get One Year of Digital Security With The Mac Premium Security Bundle [Deals]

By

CoM-MacPremiumBundle-01

Seasoned Mac users know that their computers aren’t immune to malware, viruses, and other privacy violators. But new Mac users may still be hearing the old myth that Macs are immune to the evils of the Internet.

This Cult of Mac Deals offer aims to help out both the new and seasoned Mac user with one year of digital security with The Mac Premium Security Bundle. We’ve got it available for only $49.99 for a limited time – a savings of 64%!

Readdle’s Terrific Do-It-All Documents App Comes To iPhone

By

Screen Shot 2013-04-11 at 15.49.29

Readdle Documents has today been updated with support for the iPhone, following its launch on the iPad back in January. Documents isn’t just a file manager, but also a document editor, a web browser, and a media player. So whether you’re editing a letter, organizing some photos, or you just want to kick back and watch that movie you downloaded, Documents will let you do it all — and for free.