I wanted to know what everyone is using for browsers with their Macs? Safari? Firefox? Chrome? Anything else?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MacOS browsers what's everyone using?
- Thread starter EricandSuebee
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I normally use Firefox because it gives me ability to easily delete cookies etc. when on a web site - I use several that only allow a certain number of access / month free so I can just easily delete that sites cookies by clicking on the area just before the web address on bar.
I think it also gives me more options to clean up when I exit browser.
Occasionally I use Safari
I think it also gives me more options to clean up when I exit browser.
Occasionally I use Safari
Safari. No contest. At least on Mac OS, that is.
Ever so often I try Safari, mostly due to the bookmarks integration with my phone and Apple Pay. I always end up back on Firefox. The day to day browsing experience, to me, is just superior on Firefox.
I use safari as my main browser, with chrome as a secondary browser because it syncs with my non-apple devices.
I tried all browsers on my mac and i found that opera is the best browser.
- safari is the fastest and best looking, works great with magic mouse and trackpad. Somehow, the lack of features and extensions (even a decent free ad block) makes safari useless.
- firefox is heavy and not so battery-friendly. Also overheats the CPU. With firefox 71 things are going to change;
- vivaldi - good, but also, cpu overheating problem;
- opera - full featured, a ton of extensions, battery mode (CPU stays 45C compared to 55C with firefox/vivaldi), good sync;
- chrome - i don't use chrome on any platform.
- safari is the fastest and best looking, works great with magic mouse and trackpad. Somehow, the lack of features and extensions (even a decent free ad block) makes safari useless.
- firefox is heavy and not so battery-friendly. Also overheats the CPU. With firefox 71 things are going to change;
- vivaldi - good, but also, cpu overheating problem;
- opera - full featured, a ton of extensions, battery mode (CPU stays 45C compared to 55C with firefox/vivaldi), good sync;
- chrome - i don't use chrome on any platform.
Safari, I just somehow like it more and somehow can’t warm to Chrome. Some random reasons are: the address bar properly shows history as you type (Chrome sort of does but sort of doesn’t), standard OS text tools work (e.g. text expansion, or a service I have called Word Service that lets me change case of text with a shortcut), you can force-download a file with Alt-Return, you get a standard macOS Print dialog.
However, it’s really annoying that my iCloud tabs have gone missing since upgrading to Safari 13. If this problem doesn’t get fixed soon I’ll have to investigate something else.
However, it’s really annoying that my iCloud tabs have gone missing since upgrading to Safari 13. If this problem doesn’t get fixed soon I’ll have to investigate something else.
Edit: for the past several days, I have noticed high memory usage, therefore I decided to find out what is eating away all the memory. After brief look at Activity Monitor, I have noticed that main culprit behind this is Safari.
Which got me disappointed, Safari has always been easy on memory, and now it is a memory hog.
So, I decided to give Firefox a shot. The results after few hours of usage are in!
Safari: 40-45 percent memory pressure with 4-5 tabs opened. Once it even got to 50!
Firefox: so far 32-33 percent, same amount of tabs opened.
This makes the case concluded to me, I am quitting Safari until Apple decides to solve the memory leaks. I cannot speak about battery life as I am using desktop, so I don't care.
(I do miss the iCloud keychain, though...😢)
Which got me disappointed, Safari has always been easy on memory, and now it is a memory hog.
So, I decided to give Firefox a shot. The results after few hours of usage are in!
Safari: 40-45 percent memory pressure with 4-5 tabs opened. Once it even got to 50!
Firefox: so far 32-33 percent, same amount of tabs opened.
This makes the case concluded to me, I am quitting Safari until Apple decides to solve the memory leaks. I cannot speak about battery life as I am using desktop, so I don't care.
(I do miss the iCloud keychain, though...😢)
Safari because it's efficient and mostly free of Google's influence. Opera for a few specific tasks where Safari doesn't perform as well (and occasionally YouTube videos, though nowadays most of the time I use VLC or IINA to watch YouTube).
On older Macs and in Windows it's a decent browser. Would be even better if Mozilla had kept support for MacOS 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) as that is where most of my use of Firefox happens (thanks to Firefox Legacy). But its open-source nature enables porting to older unsupported platforms.
Firefox doesn't feel like a native MacOS app and hasn't for years. Fundamental things like elastic scrolling, accurate colors on the Retina P3 display, and dark menus in dark mode aren't there. It really bugs me to the point that it's not even usable.
On older Macs and in Windows it's a decent browser. Would be even better if Mozilla had kept support for MacOS 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) as that is where most of my use of Firefox happens (thanks to Firefox Legacy). But its open-source nature enables porting to older unsupported platforms.
I agree, but at this moment, I am more interested in performance than how app looks like.
Firefox on MacOS has its share of memory leaks as well. Try running it on a 2006 iMac with MacOS 10.8.5 and 3 GB RAM and you'll see what I mean, doesn't take long at all for it to slow to a crawl with a handful of tabs open. Video playback is especially problematic and I had to restart the browser periodically because of a memory leak that would also result in unusable performance after a certain period of time.
Problem is, it's still the best modern browser that will work, because it's the only modern browser that will work.
Safari for personal use. No issues with memory leaks, YouTube seems alright when I use it.
Chrome for work. Their machine, their choice for software.
I've tried to get into Firefox, but it's just not for me.
Chrome for work. Their machine, their choice for software.
I've tried to get into Firefox, but it's just not for me.
