Apple Previews Big Update to Safari on Mac, Featuring New Privacy Tools, Built-in Translation, Improved Tabs, and More - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Apple Previews Big Update to Safari on Mac, Featuring New Privacy Tools, Built-in Translation, Improved Tabs, and More

Apple today during its WWDC keynote unveiled macOS Big Sur, which comes with a big update to Apple's native Safari browser.

apple macos bigsur customizedsafari startpage 06222020
Tabs have been redesigned to make navigating with Safari faster and more powerful by showing more tabs onscreen, displaying favicons by default to easily identify open tabs, and giving users a quick preview of a page by simply hovering over the tab.

A new Privacy Report button in the toolbar gives users insight into how sites are using their connection, and which trackers have been blocked. Users can choose when and which websites a Safari extension can work with, and tools like data breach password monitoring never reveal users' password information.

apple macos bigsur safari improvedtabs 06222020
Extensions support for Safari is adopting new standard, so users can bring over extensions from other browsers. Users can also give extensions access just for a day, on a certain website, or for every website. In addition, the Mac App Store has a new extensions category that includes editorial spotlights and top charts.

apple macos bigsur safari privacyreport 06222020
Meanwhile, native-translation capabilities are now built into Safari, and the browser can detect and translate entire webpages from seven languages. There's also a customizable Start Page with background image support that extends to Reading List and iCloud Tabs.

Aside from features, Safari is getting faster. Apple says it now loads frequently visited sites an average of 50 percent faster than Chrome.

Popular Stories

iOS 27 Next to iPhone

Here's When iOS 27 Rolls Out Today in Every Time Zone [Update: It's Out]

Sunday September 13, 2026 3:00 am PDT by
Update 10:04 a.m.: iOS 27 is rolling out now, though it may take a bit for all users to see it, so keep checking! Apple is about to release iOS 27, which will finally deliver more advanced Siri AI capabilities as well as a variety of other refinements, improvements, and new features to iPhones. It's Apple's biggest software update of the year, and Apple announced at Wednesday's iPhone event...
iOS 27 Icon iPhone

iOS 27 Available Today With These 8 New Features

Monday September 14, 2026 9:00 am PDT by
Update: Apple has released iOS 27. During its iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo event last week, Apple announced that iOS 27 will be released widely on Monday, September 14. iOS 27 should be available around 10 a.m. Pacific Time / 1 p.m. Eastern Time today via the Settings app, under General → Software Update. Below, we have highlighted eight new features and changes coming with iOS...
deep black iphone 18 pro

Apple Says iPhone 18 Pro Max Sold in U.S. Differs in One Way

Saturday September 12, 2026 3:27 pm PDT by
As noted by Nicolas Lellouche, who writes for the French tech website Numerama, Apple has updated its tech specs pages for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max to clarify which models are equipped with its new C2 cellular modem and where. Apple now says the iPhone 18 Pro has a C2 modem worldwide, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max uses the chip in every country except for the U.S. According...

Top Rated Comments

abrantes09 Avatar
81 months ago
Im switching... I was looking for a reason and I've been given a reason...this is epic
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
81 months ago

The iMac hasn't been redesigned in twelve years and you're talking about updates to Rosetta? 🤔
One of the interesting things I picked up today watching the video is that Apple seems to have many different people working on many different projects. It doesn't appear, as some think, to be a single group of people working on 1 project at a time. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they have an entire department that handles artwork like emojis instead of it just being the developers doing that work. Who can say?

It's entirely possible those two things you mentioned are handled by completely different groups of people. And I would further guess that progress, or lack thereof, on one team probably doesn't affect the progress of the other team in this particular case.

You could literally have said "The iMac hasn't been redesigned in twelve years and you're talking about..." and stuck anything they said there today at the end and it would fit just as well. One has nothing to do with the other.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
81 months ago
The only question is: will it do VP9? (Either natively or via the new extension functions.)
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
V-l-a-d-i-m-i-r Avatar
81 months ago

I wish they would bring back Safari for Windows. Apple has to realize that many of us loyal customers also use Windows devices.
Yes, I totally agree.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
velocityg4 Avatar
81 months ago
If it does indeed get better extension support I may try it out. Maybe this will pry me away from Firefox and Chrome.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Airforcekid Avatar
81 months ago
Ill give it a try but I cant imagine it being faster than Brave plus I dont want to lose all my Chrome extensions.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)