Safari 15 has faced a barrage of complaints about its controversial new design, and while Apple has listened to user feedback and reversed some changes or made them optional, many users still struggle to discern an active tab from a background tab on the Mac browser because of the inverted shading.
Unfortunately for users who do not like the new design, Apple has not made any changes to the shading of tabs in either the Safari 15.1 beta or the latest version of the experimental Safari Technology Preview browser.
Fortunately however, developer Zhenyi Tan was inspired by John Gruber's Daring Fireballarticle about the issue and has since come up with a simple Safari extension called ActiveTab that provides a solution.
ActiveTab simply makes it easier to spot the active tab in Safari on Mac by drawing a line underneath it. There are eight colors to choose from, and the line below the tab can be customized to be between 1 and 7 pixels wide.
As Zhenyi notes, the extension works best with the "Separate" tab layout selected and "Show color in tab bar" disabled in the Tab section of Safari's Preferences. Zhenyi also cautions that ActiveTab will not work reliably if you have so many tabs in a window that the tab bar becomes scrollable.
ActiveTab is available for $1.99 on the Mac App Store, with no in-app purchases, no ads, and no tracking.
Safari 14 tabs were a better UX design in every way: more attractive, more intuitive, more minimal, a more efficient use of available screen space, more drag-able and tab-like.
Lighter tabs are lighter because they are in the foregrounds - there is more light on them; darker tabs are darker because they are in the background - there is less light on them. It is 101. I can't understand why a designer at Apple would go the opposite way to this. There have been other controls in Mac OS / iOS that have done the same thing, and it is always confusing what the currently selection option is. Design is supposed to get out of the way, it should be 'invisible' so that we can use something without having to think about it.
Don't most people run dark mode? Well, I do and my safari looks fine. The active tab is lighter than the inactive ones, just as you'd expect.
It should be the same on light mode but it's not. That's the problem. When I switch to dark mode I'm even more confused. Suddenly active tab is lighter than inactive @@
I use auto dark/light mode: light during the day, dark at night. In dark mode, the lighter tab is active. In light mode, the darker tab is active. When the mouse hovers over a tab, it becomes the same color as the active tab. It's terrible design! Even in DOS things were more visible.
Monday October 4, 2021 11:05 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Safari 15's controversial new design on the Mac has led to complaints about the way the browser indicates which tab is active.
As illustrated by Daring Fireball's John Gruber, there was never any ambiguity about which tab is active in previous versions of Safari, as an active tab is shown with lighter shading that matches the browser's toolbar.
In Safari 15, however, tabs have a new...
For its new mobile and desktop OSes, Apple is redesigning the Safari browser user interface to be more compact and allow for better organization of multiple open tabs, specifically with a new feature called Tab Groups.
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Monday October 18, 2021 5:52 pm PDT by Juli Clover
With the macOS Monterey and iPadOS 15 release candidates that were seeded to developers today, Apple has eliminated the option to use the Color Tab Bar with the separate tab design in Safari.
A tab bar with color in Safari 15 If you want to have a color tab bar that blends in with the background color of a website, you need to toggle on the Compact Tab Bar, which is the tab bar design that...
In iOS 15, Safari has been completely redesigned with easier-to-reach controls in mind. Foremost is a new, compact tab bar that floats at the bottom of the screen when you're not inputting a URL address. Safari on iOS has also inherited the Start Page from macOS Big Sur, and you can now create tab groups to allow you to easily access them across devices. Let's take a closer look at how it all...
Monday September 20, 2021 11:37 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released Safari 15 for macOS Big Sur and macOS Catalina devices, with Apple introducing support for features that are going to be coming in the macOS Monterey update set to be released later this year.
Safari 15 introduces a new look for Safari with rounded, more defined tabs and support for transparency, a compact tab bar option that can be toggled on or off, and Tab Groups....
Monday October 18, 2021 12:33 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple has admitted defeat on the Safari design changes that have been present for the entire macOS Monterey beta, and the release candidate that was provided to developers today reverts to the old style that was available prior to Safari 15. Safari design in the macOS Monterey release candidate macOS Monterey now features a standard Big Sur tab design that does have the tabs with spaces in...
Wednesday October 20, 2021 6:24 pm PDT by Eric Slivka
Following in the footsteps of the macOS Monterey release candidate seeded earlier this week, Apple has released a fourth beta version of Safari 15.1 for macOS Big Sur and Catalina to developers that restores the previous tab design that was in place prior to Safari 15.
Safari 15.1 now features a standard Big Sur tab design, which is enabled by default and is labeled "Separate" in Safari...
The fourth beta of iPadOS 15 that was released today introduces tweaks to Safari, with the Safari layout now mirroring the updated layout that was introduced in macOS Monterey Beta 3. The new Safari design in iPadOS 15 beta 4 Prior to this beta, Safari on iPad was similar to Safari on iOS with no dedicated tab bar, but after the update, Apple has added a dedicated tab bar that's activated by...
Thursday September 30, 2021 10:13 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced in March 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari.
Safari Technology Preview release 133 includes bug fixes and performance improvements for CSS, CSS Cascade Layers, CSS Font Loading API,...
Thursday September 16, 2021 2:24 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced in March 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari.
Safari Technology Preview release 132 includes bug fixes and performance improvements for Web Inspector, CSS, JavaScript, Web API, WebRTC,...
Top Rated Comments
Safari 14 tabs were a better UX design in every way: more attractive, more intuitive, more minimal, a more efficient use of available screen space, more drag-able and tab-like.