Safari

Going hands-on with the new ChatGPT Atlas browser for Mac makes it crystal clear that Safari risks becoming irrelevant. Our browsing habits are evolving fast, and Apple’s browser just isn’t keeping up

For years, Safari has been my go-to browser on the Mac due to its speed and power efficiency. But with Apple falling behind in the artificial intelligence wars, and a new breed of AI-boosted browsers coming on strong, that could change. I went hands-on with ChatGPT Atlas to see what the future of internet browsing looks like.

October 25, 2003: Mac OS X Panther arrives on Macintosh computers, bringing several useful new features and making Safari Apple’s default web browser for the first time.

The new Exposé feature in OS X Panther lets Mac users instantly view all open windows at once. And the new iChat AV allows people to talk with audio and video as well as text.

If you stumble across a webpage or a link in a different language, you can instantly translate the website to English directly from Safari. Unlike Google Chrome, Safari even translates the text inside images using Live Text.

And, if you accidentally change the language of a website to one you don’t speak, you can turn this feature on to help you change it back. At Cult of Mac, we use the feature to translate rumors or blog posts often written in Chinese, Korean or Japanese, like this.

You don’t need to select the words paragraph by paragraph and copy them into Google Translate (or even Apple’s own Translate app). Get the entire page in English at the tap of a button. Here’s how to make the most out of this handy Safari feature.

A new act in Japan will force Apple to open the iPhone’s App Store to non-WebKit browsers later this year. Apple currently only allows non-WebKit browsers in the EU App Store, all due to the Digital Markets Act.

Yet, all major iPhone browsers, including Chrome and Firefox, use the same WebKit engine as Safari on iOS. This is despite them using a different engine on desktop.

A lot of Mac owners use Google Chrome as their web browser, and personally, I don’t get it. For Apple fans, it seems like a total disconnect not to use Safari vs. Chrome.

For starters, Apple markets its products as privacy-forward and seamlessly integrated with each other. And the web browser is an essential component of your computer, whether we’re talking Mac, iPhone or iPad. You have a lot to gain by using Safari on all your devices.

But look at the numbers: Apple’s web browser Safari only captures 18% of the market, a distant second to Google’s Chrome. Here’s my attempt to sway it the other way — the top five reasons I use Safari instead of Chrome.

Apple’s Safari web browser packs loads of privacy features that will keep your online activity hidden from ad networks, user tracking and data farms. But are you sure you have everything turned on? Some of Apple’s most important privacy-protecting features don’t come enabled by default.

In light of Google baking ever-more invasive user tracking into Chrome, there are even more reasons to use Safari instead. If you want to make the most out of the best and most secure mainstream browser, here’s how.

Apple reportedly held internal discussions to acquire AI startup Perplexity AI. The latter is an AI-powered search engine. It uses a large language model (LLM) to process the answers and presents them in an easier-to-understand format.

The discussions inside Apple are seemingly at an early level, and it may not even officially provide an offer to the young startup.

Apple focused heavily on the new Liquid Glass design language during the iOS 26 unveiling last week. But there’s more to the operating system than the glossy new look that’s coming to all the company’s operating systems.

While Apple highlighted iOS 26’s major features during the  WWDC25 keynote, many meaningful quality-of-life improvements flew under the radar. Here are some of the smaller, hidden features in iOS 26 that you shouldn’t miss.

I’ve spent the week hands-on with iOS 26, living with its stunning new design and incredible features. I really love the direction iOS is going — even if there are a lot of kinks that need to be worked out before its September release.

Liquid Glass, the flashy new user interface, is gorgeous. Loads of people will love the new Lock Screen and Home Screen features, like Spatial Scenes and clear icons. A few other features may need some tweaking, however, like the new Camera app and Phone app.

Should you install it yourself? God no, it’s a buggy mess. You should definitely not install it on your daily driver. But should you be excited to get it in September, after Apple irons out the kinks? Absolutely. Keep reading or watch our video for a hands-on look at the joys (and annoyances) of iOS 26.

June 11, 2007: At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, CEO Steve Jobs unveils Safari 3 for Windows, bringing the company’s web browser to PCs for the first time.

Apple pitches Safari as the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use web browser, capable of rendering web pages up to twice as fast as Internet Explorer and 1.6 times faster than Firefox. Safari for Windows will last until 2012, but never becomes a major player on Microsoft’s dominant operating system.

Apple reportedly is cooking up significant changes to core iPhone and iPad apps, with redesigned interfaces coming soon to the Phone, Safari, Camera and Messages apps. The company plans to reveal the app updates Monday during the WWDC25 keynote, alongside other sweeping changes to its operating systems.

Before too much longer, doing a search in the Safari web browser might bring up AI-powered results rather than the standard Google search engine, according to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services.

Cue points out that this is Apple following a trend, as the company sees Safari users increasingly turning to AIs in place of traditional search engines.

You can easily change the default browser on your iPhone if you prefer to use Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge or any other alternative. Maybe you use a PC at home and want your bookmarks, history and passwords to sync to your iPhone. Or maybe you simply prefer something other than Apple’s Safari browser.

Whichever browser you set as your iPhone’s default will open when you tap on a link from Messages or Mail, get AirDropped a URL, scan a QR code, search the web with Siri and perform other tasks. This doesn’t mean Safari will be deleted, however. Apple’s stock app will remain installed on your iPhone if case you decide to switch back (which is super-easy).

Here’s how to change the default browser on your iPhone — and transfer your bookmarks and data, too. Keep reading or watch our quick video.

Since I spend a lot of time using Safari on my iPhone, any new tips and tricks I learn can feel life-changing. Apple’s mobile web browser proves absolutely instrumental to my iPhone usage (and odds are, it does for you, too).

Here are a few of my favorite hidden features. These Safari tips will help you browse the web faster, clean up your experience and restore tabs you accidentally close. I also have a handy Shortcut you can download at the end.

Keep reading or watch our video.

Safari’s Hide Distracting Items feature lets you remove ads from your iPhone, along with other elements on the page that irritate you. It doesn’t require an ad blocker or a paid extension — Apple built it right into the browser in iOS 18.

Hide Distracting Items is not an ad blocker per se, but if you are pestered by pop-ups and other items with no obvious close button, Hide Distracting Items can come to the rescue. Here’s how to use it — keep reading or watch our video.

Safari on the Mac feels a lot faster to use than Google Chrome. It is also more battery efficient and takes fewer resources. Yet, I prefer using Google Chrome on my MacBook.

Despite its faults, Google Chrome trumps Safari in many key aspects. There’s a reason why Google’s browser is the most popular choice worldwide.

So, you’ve been using Safari’s Private Browsing mode on your iPhone or iPad, for whatever reason, but you forget to close out of the tab. The next time you open Safari, you’ll be thrown into whatever unscrupulous web page you had open last time — and the result can range from unfortunate to embarrassing, depending upon what you were looking at and where you are when you unexpectedly resume the Private Browsing session.

Luckily, iOS offers a foolproof way to avoid reopening a Private Browsing mode session. Let me show you how.

The United Kingdom could precipitate a significant iPhone revamp after a government report found that “Apple’s rules restrict other competitors from being able to deliver new, innovative features that could benefit consumers.”

The findings in the report are sure to inform government regulators as they enforce the U.K.’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, which goes into effect in January 2025.

Apple added several nifty new features to Safari in iOS 18. The iPhone’s redesigned web browser boasts an all-new Page Menu. Plus, two big new features help surface what you’re looking for on the web.

The last big Safari redesign for iPhone, which arrived three years ago, moved the address bar to the bottom of the screen by default. It also shoved several useful features into a menu in the address bar, which made it difficult to discover them. Apple tries to reverse that second problem in the new Safari.

Here’s what’s new in iOS 18 in Safari on iPhone — keep reading or watch our video.

European iPhone and iPad users will be able to kick Apple’s Phone and Messages apps to the curb if they wish. The same goes for an array of other applications that iOS currently makes the default options.

These join a long list of other changes being forced on Apple by the EU’s Digital Markets Act.

As an alternative to using the Apple Podcasts app, as of Monday anyone can browse, hear, sync and share Apple Podcasts in 170 countries on all major web browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Edge and Firefox.

So now Apple Podcasts joins the likes of Podbay and Podurama in offering its own online player for anyone on any platform.

The Opera browser’s new mobile version for iPhone, dubbed Opera One for iOS, integrates artificial intelligence features like image generation and voice input, a free VPN for private browsing and other elements to offer a fresh alternative to pre-installed browsers on Apple devices like Safari, the company said Tuesday.

“Our research shows mobile phone users are six times more likely to be happy than not, after switching away from their system’s default browser,” said Jona Bolin, product manager at Opera. “So with Opera One for iOS, we want to further raise the bar and deliver a better browsing experience versus what users will find pre-installed.”

Apple should never have entered into the deal that had Google paying billions every year to be the default search engine for iPhone, Mac, and iPad. And it’s shameful that it’ll take a court order to finally make Apple do the right thing.

A company that claims to carefully protect the privacy of its users shouldn’t be part of an arrangement that steered those users toward Google, whose business is built on privacy violation. Interestingly, some users may find that certain websites require specific browser settings to function correctly, such as ensuring you enable JavaScript on iPhone for a smoother browsing experience.

A U.S. federal judge ruled Monday that Google paying Apple billions to be the default search engine on iPhone and other devices is a violation of antitrust law. He said it makes Google a monopolist.

This is the result of a court case brought by the Department of Justice against Google. Apple isn’t directly involved, though its annual income may have just dropped by $15 billion or $20 billion. Or more.

Apple added Distraction Control to the Safari web browser in the iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia 15 betas released Monday. The new feature allows users to remove elements they find irritating or distracting from web pages.

Some have called Distraction Control an ad blocker. It’s not. Or certainly not a very good one.