The Safari beta is actually covering ~6 months of work in WebKit. So it isn't one release with 500 fixes. It is more of a consolidation.
But yes WebKit has been getting tons of feature gap and bug fixed in the past 2-3 years. I think it accelerated during Safari 17, and Safari 18 has been the release that I find it good enough for most cases and finally with no rendering issues on all the site I browse.
I have been trying to get the release note and update from Safari on HN frontpage but it never got much attention. Hopefully like you others will see how far Safari has come. And out of all the features coming from new macOS releases it has always been Safari that I am most looking forward to.
At the same time I still think it has some way to go before catching up to Firefox and Chrome is many areas. But at least it is improving fast.
It's because the EU is forcing competition on them for iOS Safari, and iOS Safari shares code with MacOS Safari. Now they have to at least try to keep up.
I use Adguard/wipr to great success. Why's uBlock Origin better? Also, wipr now has filtr, which provides URL filtering at the macOS level, so it's as efficient as it gets.
Seconded for Wipr. It's my favorite adblocker I've tried yet (although 1Blocker is also really nice). And if the author sells it to some creepy company, the Safari API means that the new owner can't spy on my viewing. I'm not sure how it could be materially improved by using less privacy-respecting APIs.
Quick question: how do you distinguish content blocker extensions from regular extensions? All the Adblockers I know have to use both to be effective at hiding ads, especially on YouTube.
In that case, the new owner can still do the spying.
I think the limitations are similar to the manifest v3 issues that the Chrome version has. Specifically, you (the ad blocker) send the browser a list of sites to block, instead you blocking them yourself. That means it's way harder to do clever things like scriptlet injection to find ads and get around adblock detection.
I use AdGuard, Wipr, and uBlock Origin Lite on my iPhone, and uBlock Origin on desktop.
I swear there are little gaps in each that the others get, but they're very minor. When uBlock Origin Lote recently released on iOS (within the last year), I noticed a few more things blocked. I also prefer the custom element removal or uBlock and can reuse my desktop filters.
It's free, so I'd recommend adding it as an addition to the bunch.
Does this help stable Safari in any way? I have a WebKit bug I’m tracking that’s fixed in STP but not in stable and it seems like there’s no telling whether it’ll ever land.
It'll land eventually. They always do, though maybe months down the road. But of course Apple won't preannounce its plans, and unfortunately I'm not aware of a way to track WebKit commits in specific Safari releases.
Anybody know how to get Safari to “sanitize” on shutdown (delete cookies, cache, etc), except for whitelisted domains? After lots of fiddling I’ve realized this is probably the best privacy/convenience compromise for me, but Safari is the only browser I can’t even find a plugin to do it in.
s/Safari/Firefox/ and it is super simple to do this. I know that's not helpful to the question as asked, but possibly a better answer???
As for Safari, closest I see is Preferences -> General -> Remove History Items. It has options ranging from After One Day, one week, one month, never. I don't see an option for at quit like FF has.
Wonder if they will ever fix upload progress using XHR, pretty annoying to not be able show accurate progress to the user when using larger chunk sizes:
This update fixed some web inspector bugs that I reported, but I can't use it because Safari Technology Preview inexplicably supports fewer macOS versions than Safari itself, i.e., no longer Sequoia.
Safari supports 3 major macOS versions. For example, Safari 26 continues to support Sonoma and Sequoia as well as Tahoe: https://support.apple.com/en-us/127685
Safari 27 will support Golden Gate, Tahoe, and Sequoia. However, Safari Technology Preview now supports only Golden Gate and Tahoe, despite the fact that the same WebKit commits will make their way into regular Safari on Sequoia. Thus, it seems that Apple is just shooting itself in the foot by failing to test sufficiently on one supported platform.
It’s impressive that pinch-zooming reddit.com in-out-in-out has reliably crashed ios safari for at least a few years already. One would assume Apple gets telemetry from iphone default browser crashes, and reddit seems important enough to warrant a fix
It is when compared to Firefox. Safari and now Google claim that it's for security, as the newer interfaces expose way less attack surface for malicious add-ons. I think that it's true that it does improve security, although I'm not sure that I believe Google when they say they're not doing it to stop people from blocking their main revenue source.
After being so disappointed by Tahoe and the whole Alan Dye era, it’s great to see Apple getting their mojo back. Golden Gate is shaping up to be a great release.
Like last months announcement of over 500 fixes.
https://webkit.org/blog/17967/news-from-wwdc26-webkit-in-saf...
But yes WebKit has been getting tons of feature gap and bug fixed in the past 2-3 years. I think it accelerated during Safari 17, and Safari 18 has been the release that I find it good enough for most cases and finally with no rendering issues on all the site I browse.
I have been trying to get the release note and update from Safari on HN frontpage but it never got much attention. Hopefully like you others will see how far Safari has come. And out of all the features coming from new macOS releases it has always been Safari that I am most looking forward to.
At the same time I still think it has some way to go before catching up to Firefox and Chrome is many areas. But at least it is improving fast.
https://webkit.org/blog/18136/introducing-the-safari-mcp-ser...
Looks like the Safari MCP is also now available in the most recent Golden Gate beta part of system Safari:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-developer-t...
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
Quick question: how do you distinguish content blocker extensions from regular extensions? All the Adblockers I know have to use both to be effective at hiding ads, especially on YouTube.
In that case, the new owner can still do the spying.
I swear there are little gaps in each that the others get, but they're very minor. When uBlock Origin Lote recently released on iOS (within the last year), I noticed a few more things blocked. I also prefer the custom element removal or uBlock and can reuse my desktop filters.
It's free, so I'd recommend adding it as an addition to the bunch.
As for Safari, closest I see is Preferences -> General -> Remove History Items. It has options ranging from After One Day, one week, one month, never. I don't see an option for at quit like FF has.
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=277286
Safari 27 will support Golden Gate, Tahoe, and Sequoia. However, Safari Technology Preview now supports only Golden Gate and Tahoe, despite the fact that the same WebKit commits will make their way into regular Safari on Sequoia. Thus, it seems that Apple is just shooting itself in the foot by failing to test sufficiently on one supported platform.
Not sure how this comment is related to Safari Technology Preview, though, which is Mac-only.
Apple and Google have far too many incentives to wall garden browsers, Apple due to the app store, Google due to advertising.
Independent browsers are the only safe path forward.
Google: ad blocking