Apple Previews Big Update to Safari on Mac, Featuring New Privacy Tools, Built-in Translation, Improved Tabs, and More

Apple today during its WWDC keynote unveiled macOS Big Sur, which comes with a big update to Apple's native Safari browser.

apple macos bigsur customizedsafari startpage 06222020
Tabs have been redesigned to make navigating with Safari faster and more powerful by showing more tabs onscreen, displaying favicons by default to easily identify open tabs, and giving users a quick preview of a page by simply hovering over the tab.

A new Privacy Report button in the toolbar gives users insight into how sites are using their connection, and which trackers have been blocked. Users can choose when and which websites a Safari extension can work with, and tools like data breach password monitoring never reveal users' password information.

apple macos bigsur safari improvedtabs 06222020
Extensions support for Safari is adopting new standard, so users can bring over extensions from other browsers. Users can also give extensions access just for a day, on a certain website, or for every website. In addition, the Mac App Store has a new extensions category that includes editorial spotlights and top charts.

apple macos bigsur safari privacyreport 06222020
Meanwhile, native-translation capabilities are now built into Safari, and the browser can detect and translate entire webpages from seven languages. There's also a customizable Start Page with background image support that extends to Reading List and iCloud Tabs.

Aside from features, Safari is getting faster. Apple says it now loads frequently visited sites an average of 50 percent faster than Chrome.

Popular Stories

iOS 18

Apple Says iOS 18.4 Will Be Released in April With These New Features

Wednesday February 26, 2025 7:15 am PST by
In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 18.4 will be released in April. From the Apple News+ Food announcement:Coming with iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, Apple News+ subscribers will have access to Apple News+ Food, a new section that will feature tens of thousands of recipes — as well as stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more — from the...
Generic iPhone 17 Feature With Full Width Dynamic Island

Latest iPhone 17 Series CAD Images in Line With Redesign Rumors

Friday February 28, 2025 2:51 am PST by
Apple is expected to embrace a new camera system design for some models in its upcoming iPhone 17 series, and the latest purported CAD images don't deviate from what we have been hearing lately about Apple's new lineup. If you do not like the sound of an iPhone with a Google Pixel-style camera bar, look away now. Seasoned leaker Sonny Dickson shared the following images in a post on X...
iphone 16e usb c feature

Apple Provides Reason for iPhone 16e's Lack of MagSafe

Friday February 28, 2025 4:39 am PST by
Apple has offered a reason why the iPhone 16e doesn't include MagSafe, one of the more notable omissions from its latest entry-level smartphone. According to Apple representatives who spoke to Daring Fireball's John Gruber, MagSafe is not included in the iPhone 16e because "most people in the iPhone 16e's target audience exclusively charge their phones by plugging them into a charging...
apple intelligence black

These New Apple Intelligence Features Are Coming in iOS 18.4

Friday February 28, 2025 3:17 pm PST by
iOS 18.4 was supposed to bring new Apple Intelligence Siri features, but Apple ended up needing to pull those capabilities from the update to continue testing. There are fewer new Apple Intelligence additions now, but there are still some new features that will make the update worth installing when it comes out in April. Priority Notifications Apple introduced Priority Notifications back at ...
Generic iOS 19 Feature Mock Light

iOS 19 Rumored to Include These New Features for Your iPhone

Saturday March 1, 2025 11:00 am PST by
iOS 19 is still around three months away from being unveiled, but there are plenty of rumors about the upcoming update. Below, we recap iOS 19 rumors so far. Redesigned Camera App A leak earlier this year allegedly revealed a redesigned Camera app coming with iOS 19. On his YouTube channel Front Page Tech in January, Jon Prosser shared a video showing what the new Camera app will...
cook trump

Trump Responds to Apple Keeping Diversity Policies

Wednesday February 26, 2025 6:32 am PST by
In an all-caps post on Truth Social today, U.S. President Donald Trump said Apple should fully end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. Tim Cook meeting with President Trump in 2017 "APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM," he wrote. Trump's post comes one day after Apple held its annual shareholders meeting, during which a majority of...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...
airpods pro purple

Here's When AirPods Pro 3 Are Rumored to Launch

Monday February 24, 2025 9:14 am PST by
According to a post on X today from a leaker known as Kosutami, Apple plans to launch AirPods Pro 3 in May or June this year. The leaker also claimed that an AirTag 2 will launch around the same time. Kosutami is best known as a collector of prototype Apple hardware, but they have occasionally shared accurate information about Apple's future product plans. For example, they accurately...
apple c1

How Fast is Apple's First-Ever 5G Modem? The Results Are Surprising

Friday February 28, 2025 10:08 am PST by
iPhone 16e reviews are now out, and Apple's custom-designed C1 modem has been put to the test. The results so far are quite surprising, as the C1's speeds are not as slow compared to Qualcomm modems as originally expected. While the C1 does not support ultra-fast mmWave 5G in the U.S., it appears to offer comparable 5G performance to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X71 modem found in the iPhone 16,...

Top Rated Comments

abrantes09 Avatar
61 months ago
Im switching... I was looking for a reason and I've been given a reason...this is epic
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MEJHarrison Avatar
61 months ago

The iMac hasn't been redesigned in twelve years and you're talking about updates to Rosetta? ?
One of the interesting things I picked up today watching the video is that Apple seems to have many different people working on many different projects. It doesn't appear, as some think, to be a single group of people working on 1 project at a time. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they have an entire department that handles artwork like emojis instead of it just being the developers doing that work. Who can say?

It's entirely possible those two things you mentioned are handled by completely different groups of people. And I would further guess that progress, or lack thereof, on one team probably doesn't affect the progress of the other team in this particular case.

You could literally have said "The iMac hasn't been redesigned in twelve years and you're talking about..." and stuck anything they said there today at the end and it would fit just as well. One has nothing to do with the other.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Airforcekid Avatar
61 months ago
Ill give it a try but I cant imagine it being faster than Brave plus I dont want to lose all my Chrome extensions.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Dom_ Avatar
61 months ago
The only question is: will it do VP9? (Either natively or via the new extension functions.)
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
velocityg4 Avatar
61 months ago
If it does indeed get better extension support I may try it out. Maybe this will pry me away from Firefox and Chrome.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
V-l-a-d-i-m-i-r Avatar
61 months ago

I wish they would bring back Safari for Windows. Apple has to realize that many of us loyal customers also use Windows devices.
Yes, I totally agree.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)