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What is your preferred browser on macos?


  • Total voters
    120

piattj

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 3, 2021
118
75
I have found Safari increasingly irritating - less responsive than of late, poor layout rendered on some websites etc. Fifrefox seems better. What do others use as apreferred browser?
 

Ghost-Hardware

macrumors newbie
May 22, 2021
24
7
I agree. Safari has become a pain in the *** since Monterey.
That's a shame because I remember Safari 15 being actually pretty good with Bug Sur.

I switched to Brave this morning on my Macs.
 

400

macrumors 6502a
Sep 12, 2015
760
319
Wales
Tricky. Been using Safari since ever and all set up with passwords etc. However the last iteration is woefully bad for me, I use firefox for general stuff and back to safari for login/shopping or whatever.
Not tried Brave, might give it a go.
One hopes they fix Safari soon. Even the Preview is hobbled for me.
 
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Ghost-Hardware

macrumors newbie
May 22, 2021
24
7
Tricky. Been using Safari since ever and all set up with passwords etc. However the last iteration is woefully bad for me, I use firefox for general stuff and back to safari for login/shopping or whatever.
Not tried Brave, might give it a go.
One hopes they fix Safari soon. Even the Preview is hobbled for me.
I started to use Dashlane with Brave for my passwords. Safari on Monterey allows you to export them in a csv file, making the transfer way easier than before.
 
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Strider64

macrumors 68000
Dec 1, 2015
1,511
13,531
Suburb of Detroit
I use Firefox only because I'm a web developer and I like the builtin debugging capabilities of Firefox. I was using Chrome, but their online debugging tools are getting a little outdated (well the last time it did when I actually used it for development). I use all the main browsers from time to time to see how my website(s) look on each one of them. Safari does a pretty darn good job. On my iPhone I use Safari.
 
Last edited:

fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,251
5,560
ny somewhere
safari, but... chrome when i need it (for example, this morning, i could not complete an online form in safari. yikes. had to do it in chrome... which worked). but 99% of the time, safari.
 

Jack Neill

macrumors 68020
Sep 13, 2015
2,272
2,308
San Antonio Texas
Safari and Edge. Edge seems to work better with Plex streaming on a few of my older Macs and I also like the favorites sync to my Windows machines. Most other browsing I use Safari.
 

paddylaz

macrumors member
Sep 18, 2012
84
103
Only issues I've ever had with Safari was the temp lack of Youtube 4k due to that codec/rights drama (now solved). And also the brief scrolling bug that plagued the early days of Big Sur.

Other than that it's always been a class act.
 

Bobcollard

macrumors newbie
Sep 23, 2021
14
14
Madison Wisconsin
Microsoft Edge, it has more performance and a better ad-blocker, besides having a better setup for password memory. It is, after all, a Google Chrome browser. It has a startup page that is always there, with a choice of sites. Better tabs too. I could go on but why make this boring for the Mac Safari lovers?
 

skous

macrumors newbie
Feb 9, 2019
24
61
Edge as I work quite much with GSuite (Edge is based on Chromium).
+ It seems that it is faster AND less resource hungry than Safari
+ it has vertical tabs!!! (if Safari will go that way, I might be tempted to switch back)
 
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sdheeraj

macrumors newbie
Oct 31, 2021
1
0
I use Safari but I keep getting an error saying "nsposixerrordomain 28" whenever I use it. I have to close the browser and reopen it. Is anyone else having this problem ever since updating to 12.0.1.
 

adrianlondon

macrumors 603
Nov 28, 2013
5,523
8,337
Switzerland
Firefox most of the time. However, it has two issues:
(1) Full-screen videos usually result in my MBA fans coming on full
(2) It does sync to FF on my iPhone, but nowhere near as seamless as Safari. FF on the phone isn't that good anyway imo.

I'd switch back to Safari, and I try it out regularly, but there are more issues than I have with Firefox.
(1) no uBlock Origin
(2) no decent cookie management such as a simply delete-on-exit, let alone white lists
(3) going "back" in some forums results in a delay and a page reload
(4) Can't set custom search engines. I want my searches to always use google.co.uk regardless of where I happen to be
(5) I don't like the tab bar in either standard or compact modes as they keep resizing
(6) I typically close tabs regularly and unlike Firefox, closing the last tab closes the window. Yeah, this is minor :)
(7) For typical web pages, Firefox is faster, maybe due to uBlock-Origin being better than Adguard-for-Safari

I do like Safari's quick and easy sync across devices, and the shared-for-you stuff is kind of cool. I did miss keychain initially when first moving to Firefox, but I use Bitwarden now which has many advantages over keychain that I wouldn't go back even if I reverted to Safari.

tl;dr There's no perfect browser for me, but Firefox is the closest.
 

TrancyGoose

macrumors 6502
Jan 13, 2021
356
179
Edge is a better browser, period.
It pains me to say this, it really does.
But, Edge runs better on my M1 Macbook Pro.
When it comes to it's sleeping tabs, i monitored this for past week, Edge consumes less RAM than safari, with multiple tabs open.
Watching Disney+, made Safari consume 1.5 GB just on that tab, vse 600 on Edge. Websites are shown correctly and there are far less glitches.
I would never use with Google Chrome, for obvious reasons, but after a week of testing and monitoring, for now, Edge has the nr 1 spot for me.

FYI: Tried to enable sleeping tabs in Safari, didn't make much of a difference, it's hogging memory lately.
I switch to Safari for Apply Pay stuff. but for anythign else....
 
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