I've used Safari daily for … must be 20 years now? Every day, for everything, minus the odd exceptionally rare circumstance. And I couldn't tell you what the last one of those was, it was so long ago.
I'm a web developer. I use its devtools constantly.
People ask why do you use Safari and not Chrome and I think the question is backwards. Why, given how lovely Safari is, would you go and download Chrome? It's really ugly and doesn't look like any of the other apps on my Mac.
When I do want other devtools, I vastly prefer Firefox's to Chrome's.
I'll join I saying I also daily Safari for generale usage (with only two extensions installed 1Blocker and Are.na) and I have basically zero issues.
I also do dev work in Firefox + Safari. I use Firefox mainly because I prefer their dev tools to do frontend work. Chrome I almost never use. This insistence that Safari is the new IE is honestly baffling. Yes Safari is not perfect and yes Apple is Apple. Still, Safari is far from being a train wreck.
I find Safari's devtools to be quite annoying, but to each their own. Firefox' dev tools still hold the crown for me.
The lack of cross-platform support is also annoying to the point where I generally don't bother testing on Safari unless I'm absolutely forced to. Until Apple releases a Safari build for Windows and/or Linux, Safari users will just have to rely on Safari's compatibility with cross-platform browsers.
The open source version of WebKit works fine as a user, but behaves differently from any official Safari releases, so as a web developer it's not really usable as a testing tool.
Orion , a web browser using the same engine that Safari, are to going to release a version for Linux. I'm expeting to get it so I could test stuff on something Safari like.
The reason to use Chrome is better extension support, better/more useful functionalities (translation, favicon bookmarks, Google Lens), better autofill/autologin, and better performance for web apps generally. Another very useful property is being able to sync your Chrome profile on any computer, which comes in very handy when you need to do stuff on computers you do not own. Doing the same with Safari is possible but a hassle.
I have used Safari since it replace Internet Explorer back in the days, then switched to Chrome a few years ago after a beta broke password syncing and AdBlocker Extensions for Safari were paid/not as good.
Like much of Apple's software, it has strengths and looks good but is really lacking in many ways. It also locks you into the walled garden pretty tight, which can be annoying at times.
Apple should go back to releasing a cross-platform version if they want to be taken seriously, in my opinion. In general, their incentive to build software solely for their platform is a double-edged sword because they can't manage to create hardware that can cover every need (especially for 3D/engineering), and it becomes very annoying to rely on it the moment you need to use another OS (either Windows or Linux).
Another example is Apple Notes being decent, but using it in the web browser is basically a joke (might as well not exist).
Safari has translation, bookmarks (favorites bar) can be either icon only, text only, or both text and icon at the same time, tabs can be pinned (Chrome also has it), "better" autofill/autologin is subjective. Chrome doesn't have better performance than Safari, both on macOS and iOS Safari is optimized better, both for battery and memory.
If you use Google products extensively and don't use Apple ecosystem integration features, then Chrome may look like it has better features; the same is true if you are on the Apple ecosystem (Notes, Reminders, Calendar, Passwords, multiple devices, etc). Seamless integration of Apple devices is one of the biggest advantages of using Apple software like Safari, where you can use iCloud Tabs to switch between devices. Also, Tab Groups is a neat feature; you can move Safari windows to an iPad with Sidecar and so on.
Google's ecosystem also has similar features, but you can argue that you're "locked into a walled garden pretty tight" with Google as well.
Browsers have their different advantages, but they are not so different from each other, especially when we compare Safari and Chrome. Maybe the only real difference is that Chrome has way more extensions.
Since MV3 Chrome has not had better extension API support, although Apple’s insistence on publishing them on the App Store means availability is still restricted. I’ve found that using `xcrun safari-web-extension-converter` on almost any Chrome extension works fine and I’ve self-signed a few (eg. Bypass Paywalls Clean) with Xcode to run on my Mac and iPhone.
> Apple’s insistence on publishing them on the App Store means availability is still restricted.
This is not true. You can distribute Safari extensions outside the Mac App Store.
While it's true that you can't distribute Safari extensions outside the iOS App Store, mobile Chrome doesn't even have extension support, so in this case, Safari has vastly better extension support.
This is like being in the 2000s and saying "Why would I use anything but IE5, everything works with it"
The market share is what makes those circumstances exceptionally rare. Meanwhile we're having to use safari specific fixes and refrain from using he newest standards just because of safari
I have colleagues who are annoyed that I use Firefox because in their world everything Chrome does is standard and browsers like Safari and Firefox are annoying outliers. No matter if something they have implemented in Chrome is _actually_ standard and no matter how proper to the spec non-Chrome browsers implement a feature they see it as a chore to support the spec rather than the Chrome browser.
So, the "Why not use Chrome instead of Safari?” certainly happens.
Safari's dev tools are infuriatingly cumbersome in comparison to Chrome. They go out of their way to make even the simplest actions hidden in multiple selects and popup menus. I even made a screencast of it: https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1711701552082079764
I wish they would fix the bug that has plagued testing against Safari for larger applications since day 1: the silent memory restart. At the very least give an error indicating why the page just refreshed so users/testers can report it, but it would honestly be best to just let a modern desktop browser use the available memory if desired.
It's criminally bad. You can't copy logged variables. You can't inspect worker threads (!?). WASM support is practically non-existant. You can't even do a heap snapshot on demand, something that should be a basic feature.
The timelines view is practically obfuscated with pretty graphs that show some aggregated data and some automatically generated snapshot points where the dev tools decide that are meaningful.
Inspecting the rendering pipeline is impossible. You can't see memory usage, compositing reasons, long frames (you kinda can but it's tricky)...
Not even going into remote debugging for iOS which crashes either the dev tools or Safari on iOS in any non-trivial scenario — the exact ones you need a debugger for.
I've used Safari daily for … must be 20 years now? Every day, for everything, minus the odd exceptionally rare circumstance. And I couldn't tell you what the last one of those was, it was so long ago.
I'm a web developer. I use its devtools constantly.
People ask why do you use Safari and not Chrome and I think the question is backwards. Why, given how lovely Safari is, would you go and download Chrome? It's really ugly and doesn't look like any of the other apps on my Mac.
When I do want other devtools, I vastly prefer Firefox's to Chrome's.
I also do dev work in Firefox + Safari. I use Firefox mainly because I prefer their dev tools to do frontend work. Chrome I almost never use. This insistence that Safari is the new IE is honestly baffling. Yes Safari is not perfect and yes Apple is Apple. Still, Safari is far from being a train wreck.
The lack of cross-platform support is also annoying to the point where I generally don't bother testing on Safari unless I'm absolutely forced to. Until Apple releases a Safari build for Windows and/or Linux, Safari users will just have to rely on Safari's compatibility with cross-platform browsers.
The open source version of WebKit works fine as a user, but behaves differently from any official Safari releases, so as a web developer it's not really usable as a testing tool.
I have used Safari since it replace Internet Explorer back in the days, then switched to Chrome a few years ago after a beta broke password syncing and AdBlocker Extensions for Safari were paid/not as good.
Like much of Apple's software, it has strengths and looks good but is really lacking in many ways. It also locks you into the walled garden pretty tight, which can be annoying at times.
Apple should go back to releasing a cross-platform version if they want to be taken seriously, in my opinion. In general, their incentive to build software solely for their platform is a double-edged sword because they can't manage to create hardware that can cover every need (especially for 3D/engineering), and it becomes very annoying to rely on it the moment you need to use another OS (either Windows or Linux).
Another example is Apple Notes being decent, but using it in the web browser is basically a joke (might as well not exist).
If you use Google products extensively and don't use Apple ecosystem integration features, then Chrome may look like it has better features; the same is true if you are on the Apple ecosystem (Notes, Reminders, Calendar, Passwords, multiple devices, etc). Seamless integration of Apple devices is one of the biggest advantages of using Apple software like Safari, where you can use iCloud Tabs to switch between devices. Also, Tab Groups is a neat feature; you can move Safari windows to an iPad with Sidecar and so on.
Google's ecosystem also has similar features, but you can argue that you're "locked into a walled garden pretty tight" with Google as well.
Browsers have their different advantages, but they are not so different from each other, especially when we compare Safari and Chrome. Maybe the only real difference is that Chrome has way more extensions.
At which cost? Huge RAM footprint, deadly battery killer, slow start time. How often do you need heavy performance for web apps versus just browsing?
This is not true. You can distribute Safari extensions outside the Mac App Store.
While it's true that you can't distribute Safari extensions outside the iOS App Store, mobile Chrome doesn't even have extension support, so in this case, Safari has vastly better extension support.
The market share is what makes those circumstances exceptionally rare. Meanwhile we're having to use safari specific fixes and refrain from using he newest standards just because of safari
Safari is not just fine. It's more than fine: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2025?stable
So, the "Why not use Chrome instead of Safari?” certainly happens.
As a browser? I agree with you.
But I also use it as my main browser, so maybe there are some nicer features in other browser dev tools I haven't been exposed too.
The timelines view is practically obfuscated with pretty graphs that show some aggregated data and some automatically generated snapshot points where the dev tools decide that are meaningful.
Inspecting the rendering pipeline is impossible. You can't see memory usage, compositing reasons, long frames (you kinda can but it's tricky)...
Not even going into remote debugging for iOS which crashes either the dev tools or Safari on iOS in any non-trivial scenario — the exact ones you need a debugger for.