Safari (web browser)
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple. It is built into several of Apple's operating systems, including macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS, and uses Apple's open-source browser engine WebKit, which was derived from KHTML.
Safari was introduced in an update to Mac OS X Jaguar in January 2003, and made the default web browser with the release of Mac OS X Panther that same year. It has been included with the iPhone since the first-generation iPhone in 2007. At that time, Safari was the fastest browser on the Mac. Between 2007 and 2012, Apple maintained a Windows version, but abandoned it due to low market share. In 2010, Safari 5 introduced a reader mode, extensions, and developer tools. Safari 11, released in 2017, added Intelligent Tracking Prevention, which uses artificial intelligence to block web tracking. Safari 13 added support for Apple Pay, and authentication with FIDO2 security keys. Its user interface was redesigned in Safari 15, Safari 18, and Safari 26.
History and development
Background
rapidly became the dominant Mac browser after its 1994 release, and eventually came bundled with Mac OS. In 1996, Microsoft released Internet Explorer for Mac, and Apple released the Cyberdog internet suite, which included a web browser. In 1997, Apple shelved Cyberdog and reached a five-year agreement with Microsoft to make IE the default browser on the Mac, starting with Mac OS 8.1. Netscape continued to be preinstalled on all Macintosh systems. Microsoft continued to update IE for Mac, which was ported to Mac OS X DP4 in May 2000.Conception
Apple introduced the Safari web browser on January 7, 2003. At the time, Steve Jobs called Safari "a turbo browser for Mac OS X." Apple created Safari for speed, calling it the fastest browser for the Mac. Jobs compared it to Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Chimera, showing that Safari was faster. The second reason that Apple created Safari was to innovate; Apple wanted to make the best browser ever. During development, several codenames were used, including "Freedom", "iBrowse", and "Alexander".Safari 1
On January 7, 2003, at Macworld San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced Safari that was based on WebKit, the company's internal fork of the KHTML browser engine. Apple released the first beta version exclusively on Mac OS X the same day. After that date, several official and unofficial beta versions followed until version 1.0 was released on June 23, 2003. On Mac OS X v10.3, Safari was pre-installed as the system's default browser, rather than requiring a manual download, as was the case with the previous Mac OS X versions. Safari's predecessor, the Internet Explorer for Mac, was then included in 10.3 as an alternative.Safari 2
In April 2005, Engineer Dave Hyatt fixed several bugs in Safari. His experimental beta passed the Acid2 rendering test on April 27, 2005, marking it the first browser to do so. Safari 2.0 which was released on April 29, 2005, was the sole browser Mac OS X 10.4 offered by default. Apple touted this version as it was capable of running a 1.8x speed boost compared to version 1.2.4, but it did not yet feature the Acid2 bug fixes. These major changes were initially unavailable for end-users unless they privately installed and compiled the WebKit source code or ran one of the nightly automated builds available at OpenDarwin. Version 2.0.2, released on October 31, 2005, finally included the Acid2 bug fixes.In June 2005, in response to KHTML criticisms over the lack of access to change logs, Apple moved the development source code and bug tracking of WebCore and JavaScriptCore to OpenDarwin. They have also open-sourced WebKit. The source code is for non-renderer aspects of the browser, such as its GUI elements and the remaining proprietary. The final stable version of Safari 2 and the last version released exclusively with Mac OS X, Safari 2.0.4, was updated on January 10, 2006, for Mac OS X. It was only available within Mac OS X Update 10.4.4, and it delivered fixes to layout and CPU usage issues among other improvements.
Safari 3
On January 9, 2007, at Macworld San Francisco, Jobs unveiled that Safari 3 was ported to the newly introduced iPhone within iPhone OS. The mobile version was capable of displaying full, desktop-class websites. At WWDC 2007, Jobs announced Safari 3 for Mac OS X 10.5, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. He ran a benchmark based on the iBench browser test suite comparing the most popular Windows browsers, and claimed that Safari had the fastest performance. His claim was later examined by a third-party site called Web Performance over HTTP load times. They verified that Safari 3 was indeed the fastest browser on the Windows platform in terms of initial data loading over the Internet, though it was only negligibly faster than Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox when it came to static content from the local cache.The initial Safari 3 beta version for Windows, released on the same day as its announcement at WWDC 2007, contained several bugs and a zero day exploit that allowed remote code executions. The issues were then fixed by Apple three days later on June 14, 2007, in version 3.0.1. On June 22, 2007, Apple released Safari 3.0.2 to address some bugs, performance problems, and other security issues. Safari 3.0.2 for Windows handled some fonts that were missing in the browser but already installed on Windows computers, such as Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, and others. The iPhone was previously released on June 29, 2007, with a version of Safari based on the same WebKit rendering engine as the desktop version but with a modified feature set better suited for a mobile device. The version number of Safari as reported in its user agent string is 3.0 was in line along with the contemporary desktop editions.
The first stable, non-beta version of Safari for Windows, Safari 3.1, was offered as a free download on March 18, 2008. In June 2008, Apple released version 3.1.2, which addressed a security vulnerability in the Windows version where visiting a malicious web site could force a download of executable files and execute them on the user's desktop. Safari 3.2, released on November 13, 2008, introduced anti-phishing features using Google Safe Browsing and Extended Validation Certificate support. The final version of Safari 3 was version 3.2.3, which was released on May 12, 2009, with security improvements.
Safari 4
Safari 4 was released on June 8, 2009. It was the first version that had completely passed the Acid3 rendering test, as well as the first version to support HTML5. It incorporated WebKit JavaScript engine SquirrelFish that significantly enhanced the browser's script interpretation performances by 29.9x. SquirrelFish was later evolved to SquirrelFish Extreme, later also marketed as Nitro, which had 63.6x faster performance. A public beta of Safari 4 was experimented on February 24, 2009.Safari 4 relied on Cover Flow to run the History and Bookmarks, and it featured Speculative Loading that automatically pre-loaded document information that is required to visit a particular website. The top sites can be displayed up to 24 thumbnails based on the frequently visited sites in a startup. The desktop version of Safari 4 included a redesign similar to that of the iPhone. The update also commissioned many developer tool improvements, including Web Inspectors, CSS element viewings, JavaScript debuggers and profilers, offline tables, database management, SQL support, and resource graphs. In addition to CSS retouching effects, CSS canvas, and HTML5 content. It replaced the initial Mac OS X-like interface with native Windows themes on Windows, using native font renderings.
Safari 4.0.1 was released for Mac on June 17, 2009, and fixed Faces bugs in iPhoto '09. Safari 4 in Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard" has built-in 64-bit support, which makes JavaScript load up to 50% faster. It also has native crash resistances that would maintain it intact if a plugin like Flash player crashes, though other tabs or windows would not be affected. Safari 4.0.4, the final version which was released on November 11, 2009, for both Mac and Windows, which further improved the JavaScript performances.
Safari 5
Safari 5 was released on June 7, 2010, and featured a less distracting reader view, and had a 30x faster JavaScript performances. It incorporated numerous developer tool improvements, including HTML5 interoperability and accessibility to secure extensions. The progress bar was re-added in this version as well. Safari 5.0.1 enabled the Extensions PrefPane by default, rather than requiring users to manually set it in the Debug menu.Version 5.1.7 was the final version for Windows. While no longer available from Apple, this release can still be downloaded from the Wayback Machine and is still functional on Windows 11.
Apple exclusively released Safari 4.1 concurrently with Safari 5 for Mac OS X Tiger. It included many features that were found in Safari 5, though it excluded the Safari Reader and Safari Extensions. Apple released Safari 5.1 for both Windows and Mac on July 20, 2011, for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion; it was faster than Safari 5.0, and included the new Reading List feature. The company simultaneously announced Safari 5.0.6 in late June 2010 for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, though the new functions were excluded from Leopard users.
Several HTML5 features were provided in Safari 5. It added supports for full-screen video, closed caption, geolocation, EventSource, and a now obsolete early variant of the WebSocket protocol. The fifth major version of Safari added supports for Full-text search, and a new search engine, Bing. Safari 5 supported Reader, which displays web pages in a continuous view, without advertisements. Safari 5 supported a smarter address field and DNS prefetching that automatically found links and looked up addresses on the web. New web pages loaded faster using Domain Name System prefetching. The Windows version received an extra update on graphics acceleration as well. The blue inline progress bar was returned to the address bar, in addition to the spinning bezel and loading indicator introduced in Safari 4. Top Sites view now has a button to switch to Full History Search. Other features included Extension Builder for developers of Safari Extensions. Other changes included an improved inspector. Safari 5 supports Extensions, add-ons that customize the web browsing experience. Extensions are built using web standards such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.