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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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.
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Wednesday July 14, 2021 11:39 am PDT by Juli Clover
In the third developer beta of macOS Monterey, which came out this morning, Apple has overhauled the design of Safari, making the tab bar more similar to the current tab bar in macOS Big Sur.
The prior Safari design did away with the dedicated URL and search interface, instead allowing any individual tab to be used for navigation input. Tabs were also all arranged at the top of the display...
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,...
Wednesday October 13, 2021 12:35 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is continuing to refine the unpopular Safari design that it introduced in macOS Monterey, and the latest beta tweaks the position of the Favorites bar.
The design initially had Favorites located below the tab bar, a departure from the location in prior versions of macOS, including macOS Big Sur. With the tenth beta, Apple has relocated Favorites and put it back above the Tab bar where...
Tuesday August 17, 2021 10:36 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple in iOS 15 introduced a new Safari experience that moves the URL bar and tab interface to the bottom of the iPhone, a decision that has been controversial with iPhone users. Safari options in iOS 15 beta 6 Throughout the beta testing period, Apple has been tweaking the design of the Safari browser on the iPhone and in beta 6, there are further refinements. The bottom tab bar has been...
Updates for Safari, FaceTime, and many other apps, Universal Control to let a single mouse or trackpad control multiple devices, new Shortcuts app, machine-learning Live Text detection and Visual Lookup, and more.
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.