Post

I’ve been using Safari full time for a week. I’m not switching back. Here’s my experience so far 🧵

First, I love compact mode. Vertical space is king on laptops, and this navbar feels way more open. Plus, the smart use of theme color makes the page blend into the UI nicely 👍

Performance: Anecdotally, I’ve found Safari is smoother rendering HTML and CSS, while Chrome excels with JS-heavy tasks. Makes Safari the king for content reading.

Features: Tab groups and reader mode are here, which is all I really need. Plus, integration with the new MacOS Passwords app is *chef’s kiss.* Cancelled my 1Password subscription.

Dev tools: I was warned that I’d miss Chrome devtools. The lack of extensions like React is a crime. Still, the essentials are here: CSS grid lines, quick select with cmd + shift + C, good storage and network tabs. It also feels less cluttered.

The biggest flaw? It’s not chromium. And you pay the price on certain sites. Quirk count so far: - CVS checkout shows white screen of death - Lower-quality audio watching video on TED - Poor scroll perf on YouTube with a large monitor

That said, I’m happy enough to keep using Safari. I like tools that do exactly what I need without extra bloat, and Safari fits the bill better than most. I’ll share updates as I go 🧭

did you try Edge?

It was my daily driver back in college, but the cruft of Microsoft-y features got to be too much for me. At that point, I might as well use Chrome 🤷‍♂️

New Edge is not the same at all. It's like Chrome, but with better UI. The vertical tabs are fantastic, with vertical tabs groups, making them so useful, kinda like a file folder explorer with one-level of folders (groups), you can still read titles of all the tabs no matter how many.