Safari

Start searching. Start typing a word or website address—Safari shows you matching websites, as well as suggested websites. Or select a favorite or frequently visited item from your Safari start page. When you already have a site open, you can type your search criteria in the active tab to launch a new search.

Customize your Safari start page. Your start page can show Favorites, Reading List items, a Privacy Report, and more. You can import a photo of your own to use as a background image, or choose one of the provided backgrounds. Share your start page across devices. To set options for the start page, click in the bottom right of the start page.

View multiple webpages in one window. Click  at the far right of the tab bar or press Command-T to open a new tab, then enter an address. Tabs resize dynamically as you change the window size. Tabs also pick up the background color of your website.

See tab contents quickly. Favicons—icons or logos associated with a website—on tabs let you identify the webpage at a glance. Hold the pointer over a tab to see a preview of the webpage contents.

View the sidebar. Click the Sidebar icon to view the sidebar, where you can manage your Tab Groups, bookmarks, Reading List, and Shared with You links.

Organize with Tab Groups. When you’re doing research for a project or vacation, you can open several tabs, then save and organize them in groups. When the sidebar is open, click the Add Tab Group button and choose New Tab Group to create a group from the tabs already open. Or choose New Empty Tab Group and search for tabs to add to a Tab Group. The Tab Groups are saved and visible in the sidebar. Switch between Tab Groups using the sidebar or the pop-up menu if the sidebar is hidden.

Shared with You. When friends in your Contacts share interesting articles, recipes, and other links with you in Messages, they automatically appear in the Shared with You section on the Safari start page and in the sidebar. Stories found in both Safari and News appear in the sidebars of both apps, so you can read them where it’s most convenient.

Discover extensions. Extensions add functionality to Safari to personalize your browsing experience. You can find extensions that block ads, find coupons, fix your grammar, and quickly save content from your favorite websites. Choose Safari > Safari Extensions to view the extensions category in the App Store, which features spotlighted Safari extensions and categories (Browse Better, Read with Ease, Top Free Apps, and so on). After you get extensions, turn them on in Safari Preferences. Select the Extensions tab, then click checkboxes to turn on extensions.

Make notes on a webpage. Highlight and make notes directly on a webpage with Quick Note, so your notes will be saved for the next time you visit. Click the Share button for the website and choose Add Quick Note. Open and view saved quick notes from the Notes sidebar or return to the website and tap the thumbnail of the saved note to open it.

Browse the web safely and privately. Safari automatically upgrades the sites you visit to HTTPS, and warns you when you visit a website that’s not secure, or that may be trying to trick you into sharing your personal data. It also protects you from cross-site tracking, by identifying and removing the data that trackers leave behind. Safari asks your permission before letting a social network see what you’re doing on third-party sites. And Safari defends you against web tracking by making your Mac harder to identify. Intelligent Tracking Prevention prevents trackers from profiling you by using your IP address.

Hide your email address. With an iCloud+ subscription, you can create a unique, random email address any time you need one (for example, when completing a form on a website), with no limit to the number of addresses you can use. When you create a Hide My Email address for a site, any email sent to that address gets forwarded to your personal email account. You can receive email without having to share your actual email address, and you can disable a Hide My Email address at any time. See Create unique, random email addresses with Hide My Email in iCloud+.

Use strong passwords. When you sign up for a new account on the web, Safari automatically creates and autofills a new strong password for you. If you choose Use Strong Password, the password is saved to your iCloud Keychain and will autofill on all the devices you log in to with the same Apple ID. Safari securely monitors your passwords, identifying any saved password that may have been involved in a published data breach and making it easy to upgrade to “Sign in with Apple” accounts when available. (See Use Sign in with Apple on Mac in the macOS User Guide.)

View a privacy report. To better understand how a site treats your privacy, click the Privacy Report button in the active tab to view the cross-site trackers that Safari is blocking for a website. Click to see a privacy report with more details about a website’s active trackers.

Translate webpages. You can instantly translate entire webpages in Safari. When you encounter a page that Safari can translate, you see a translate button in the website address field. Click to translate between any of the following languages: English, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), French, German, Italian, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Arabic, Italian, Korean, and Japanese. The button changes color to show when a webpage has been translated.

Learn more. See the Safari User Guide.