Safari as your daily driver – how do you make it work (or did you leave)?

johnkree · October 23, 2026, 7:34pm

Hi everyone,

I’ve got a new M5 MacBook Air (an upgrade from my M1 13") and I’m trying to keep it clean this time: only a few apps I actually use. The one decision I keep going back and forth on is the browser.

Right now I lean towards Zen. I’ve gotten used to vertical tabs in a sidebar and Zen just handles that much more nicely. Safari can do sidebar tabs too, but to me it doesn’t look as good, and some parts of Safari’s UI feel unnecessarily fiddly. And bubbly. I… it is so hard to look at sometimes.

What keeps pulling me back to Safari:
– open tabs from my iPhone right there
– battery life (I looked for real-world Zen vs. Safari measurements and found surprisingly little solid data, mostly older GitHub issues about high energy use in Zen)

So my questions:

Who here uses Safari as their main browser, and what makes it work for you? Any tweaks or extensions that fix the UI for you?
Who switched to Zen (or something else) and stuck with it? Did you notice a real difference in battery life?
Does anyone run both, like Zen (or any other) for work and Safari on the go?

Thanks for sharing your setups!

Bmosbacker · October 23, 2026, 7:52pm

I use Safari as my default browser on all of my devices, and I use Brave as a backup if a website is not working correctly in Safari, which is rare. I use a minimum number of extensions. I tend to be a minimalist and like to keep things simple and clean.

These are the only extensions I run:

Yaakov · October 23, 2026, 8:22pm

Agree with you and have the same setup

brookter · October 23, 2026, 8:29pm

I use Safari and am very happy with it — there’s nothing to ‘fix’. The only extension I use are for Devonthink, and Readwise.

Whenever I have to use Firefox (on Linux, for example), it feels clunky and I’m relieved to get back to Safari.

I’m sure part of this is mere familiarity, but I really don’t see any reason to move away from Safari.

KVZ · October 23, 2026, 9:40pm

Safari mainly, Brave when Safari craps out.

Katie

sridhar · October 23, 2026, 10:35pm

Here’s my Safari setup:

F3 for MRU tab switching

The first thing I set up in all my browsers is F3 to switch between the most recently used tabs.

Install ReTab extension.

In the extension settings, set ⌘E as the hop only hotkey.

Then Karabiner Elements script:

{
    "description": "Map F3 to Cmd+E in Safari",
    "manipulators": [
        {
            "conditions": [
                {
                    "bundle_identifiers": [
                        "^com\\.apple\\.Safari$"
                    ],
                    "type": "frontmost_application_if"
                }
            ],
            "from": { "key_code": "f3" },
            "to": [
                {
                    "key_code": "e",
                    "modifiers": ["left_command"]
                }
            ],
            "type": "basic"
        }
    ]
}

Fn + S to open/switch to Safari

using Karabiner Elements.

{
  "description": "Fn + S to launch/switch to Safari",
  "manipulators": [
    {
      "from": {
        "key_code": "s",
        "modifiers": {
          "mandatory": [
            "fn"
          ]
        }
      },
      "to": [
        {
          "shell_command": "/usr/bin/open -b com.apple.Safari"
        }
      ],
      "type": "basic"
    }
  ]
}

Vim-like navigation and shortcuts

At least 3 options exist: Vimari, Vifari, and Vimlike.

Vimari seems to be abandoned.

Vimlike looks polished, but key shortcuts continue to work even when some inputs have focus - basic usability fail.

I’m currently using Vifari.

f: show link hints. Typing the letters clicks the link
yf: copy the URL of the link of the typed link hint
yy: copy page URL
o: focus address bar
t: new tab
x: close tab
q: prev tab
w: next tab
[: go back
]: go forward
gg: go to top of the page
G: go to bottom of the page
u: scroll up half page
d: scroll down half page

Other extensions

Bitwarden
wBlock (free ad blocker)
Peek for Safari (shift-click a link to open it in a popup preview rather than a new tab)
Hover for Safari (expands images when hovered automatically or when pressing and holding a modifier key like Shift)
Better Player (blocks ads, dims rest of the page and centers the video in YouTube)
StopTheMadness (hover on any link and press ⌘C to copy the URL and lets me paste usernames and passwords in sites that block that)

Fn + number to switch Safari profiles

ibuys · October 23, 2026, 11:21pm

I really like Safari. It’s the most Mac-like of the browsers I think. Every so often some site won’t work, and I figure that’s probably a sign to close that tab. I’ve got a few extensions, nothing too out of the ordinary I don’t think.

wbarnes4393 · October 23, 2026, 11:36pm

I am a heretic, but I use Chrome. I used Safari for a long time, but websites not working was not rare for me. Maybe I just have bad luck as to the ones I frequent. I also have the issue of ideally having bookmarks and things sync across my Apple devices and Windows machines at work. Chrome just works everywhere, and is guaranteed to render websites correctly. I am always at a desk at home or at work, so battery life for my Macbook is not a huge concern. And I just have never been able to gin up the privacy concerns people have with Chrome and Google (perhaps because I was] a Gmail and Android user from the beginning until switching to Apple about a decade ago or so - but still use all the Google services). Like I say - I am an Apple user but I guess a heretical one. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

cornchip · October 23, 2026, 11:55pm

I use a Chrome-based browser as my daily driver and shorter battery life is definitely a cost. I’d say an hour shorter on an M3 Max, with the potential for more if a process is stuck that, anecdotally, I’ve never seen when I use Safari (still use it sporadically, and it used to be my daily.)

zkarj · October 24, 2026, 10:20pm

Safari has bugs. Firefox has bugs. Chrome, Edge, Brave, et al have bugs. Bugs annoy me.

Safari has deeper integration in the Apple ecosystem, so I use it. Its bugs (and annoyances) are not (currently) enough to convince me to lose the integration.

I know some other broswers have different features, but again, not enough to draw me away from the default.

Slickster · October 24, 2026, 10:47pm

Pretty much mirrored my experiences.

jaketheo · October 24, 2026, 11:10pm

I would prefer to use Safari because of its superior integration and iCloud syncing, but it quickly falls apart when you need multiple profiles. The way Apple designed the sidebar, profiles, and tab groups defies logic. I constantly need to have multiple windows open (one for each profile) and then need to Cmd + ~ constantly. Tabs don’t really work how I’d expect them to in the sidebar so I have to have dozens of tabs open in the horizontal toolbar. It’s a mess.

I loved Arc and now I’m experimenting with Zen after they recently released syncing. I don’t love that it’s based on Firefox and there are quirks, so we’ll see. The browser landscape is frustrating because of all the tradeoffs. It’s always accepting the ones that are least annoying, and I hate that.

Maybe one day we’ll get solid native app + integration + compatibility + good performance + cross device syncing + proper profiles/workspaces/containers + solid tab management + great design.

But that’s a long list and developing a browser is not an easy thing.

krocnyc · October 25, 2026, 2:14am

Pouring one out for my dear, soon-to-be departed Arc
I use both Arc and Chrome now, and will simply migrate everything over to Chrome when Arc is gone—too many of the sites I visit regularly don’t play nicely with Safari.

cfritze64 · October 25, 2026, 2:56am

liking Crest so far. pretty nice import of Arc settings too

airwhale · October 25, 2026, 8:20am

I am currently using Vivalid on both MacOS and iPad/iOS as my main / default browser as I like the feature set and their privacy centric approach. Safari is a nice enough brower on Apple platforms, so I am switching to that for a few use cases.

For my day-job, I need to work in a Windows environment where I can’t install anything, so I also use Edge five days a week.

I find that most browsers these days are just fading into the background and not making a huge difference to the web experience. Relying on the bookmarks-bar, basic keyboard shortcuts and a few pinned tabs is going a long way for me.

krocnyc · October 25, 2026, 1:24pm

Here’s my problem: I’ve started using Claude in Chrome more and more frequently, and was already migrating some of what I did in Arc to Chrome for that purpose. I’m not sure I want to migrate what’s left in my Arc portfolio to a new browser.

Alevyinroc · October 25, 2026, 2:22pm

I use Safari on all my Apple devices, with only a couple websites being exceptions. Having everything in sync across all my devices is really nice. There’s one website I use a couple times a month that flat-out does not render on Safari so I hop over to Firefox, and I use Edge for OnShape because its WebGL performance is better (or was last time I checked).

I’m also a very basic browser user - no tab groups, no profiles, very few extensions, and usually only 2 windows at any given time (one being a Private window for Facebook, to keep that walled off). I just haven’t developed those “muscles” for using those newer features.

ACautionaryTale · October 25, 2026, 3:27pm

I use Safari for nearly all day to day browsing, Chrome when I must (site misbehaves in Safari), Firefox for a few services, and Edge for MS online stuff for work. All browsers are 100% vanilla with zero extensions, and all but Edge are run in their respective privacy/incognito modes.

I use what I find works best for me for the task at hand and Safari gives me very, very few problems