Edge or Safari on M1 MacBook?

[iphonefreak450]

I’m thinking about switching to the Edge browser on MacBook M1 due to some compatibility reasons example being that I am not able to add my Yubikey onto my email account since Safari doesn’t support the FIDO2 protocol.

And Safari still doesn’t support Microsoft Teams when trying to launch the web version of Teams.

Is Edge more faster and takes less RAM usage?

How is one’s experience with Edge on MacBooks?

 

[davidmcdougal]

I have switched to Edge also for many of the same reasons you listed. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the veritical tabs option also since I have a wide screen monitor as my daily driver.

Another browser to check out that is based on Chromium is Arc. It is pretty amazing. Here is an invite to the browser (not affiliate link): https://arc.net/gift/b6678602

David

 

[johnkree]

I'm Mac user since 2011. I have tried and loved and hated a lot of software. But I never encountered as much problems as with using Microsoft products on Mac.
Don't get me wrong, they are trying hard and they are getting better and better but it is still a mess.
Microsoft using their own proprietary Email standards messing with almost any other client and even their own, Microsoft and Onedrive constantly syncing till the end of time, Microsoft Office and so on.

Regarding browsers: Microsoft Edge is based on Chromium engine and this makes it to some kind of a resource hog. Yes, there are better examples like Brave and others but in general, Chromium needs way more RAM than Webkit (Safari).

Safari is especially made by Apple for MacOS. All the goodies it has like Private Relay and so on are just in Safari. Apple Passwords is just working with Safari.

I'm using Firefox on Mac sometimes but I would never ever use Edge.
And regarding Teams: I'm using Teams with my iPhone because the Mac.app is melting the battery like icecream in the sun. I guess this is because they are using Electron. Which is basically a Chromium wrapper.

 

[MikeDr206]

I primarily use Safari, but use Edge for sites that don’t work with Safari. Both on a MacBook Air M1 and a Mini 2018 Intel.

Edge strikes me as slightly faster and I don’t see it using a lot of resources (memory) in Activity Monitor.

 

[vanman1]

Nothing but Firefox since I got my dual G4, 3/3/2002. Now Imac Pro base model with a La Cie 2 Big 8 and OWC dual drive dock. For 16G disk storage.

 

[johnkree]

I primarily use Safari, but use Edge for sites that don’t work with Safari. Both on a MacBook Air M1 and a Mini 2018 Intel.

Edge strikes me as slightly faster and I don’t see it using a lot of resources (memory) in Activity Monitor.

I'm not doubting, I'm just curious: Why would Edge with Chromium under the hood need less RAM than Safari with Webkit? I tried a lot of Chromium based browsers and they all ate a ton of RAM.

 

[CoMoMacUser]

I recently installed Edge on my Studio because 1) the transcription feature in the online version of Word is not available with Safari and 2) Safari doesn't support the OneNote web clipper extension. No complaints. Both are great browsers, but my personal preference is Edge.

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

Edge is fine, it's just chromium with a browser shell done by Microsoft. it's basically spyware in the same way that actual chrome is, except it's all going to Microsoft instead of google.

 

[maflynn]

Edge in general doesn't have the bloat that chrome has, at least the windows version. I generally just use chrome since it just works (to steal a motto)

 

[MBAir2010]

I would fear using Bing Chat as well as Edge on any Macbook in 2023.
because my friend who edits PC World is still trying to master that feature.

 

[ratspg]

I use Safari and Edge.... and Firefox.... and .... basically all apps exist for us to have in our toolbox so use whatever makes you happy, productive, enjoyable and getting all things done that you set out to do!