Most Mac users are browsing the web using either the built-in Safari browser or they have installed Google's Chrome browser. Both browsers have their advantages. Each works well within their own Apple or Google ecosystem. Safari has some clear advantages when it comes to MacBook battery life and privacy. Chrome works better for Google Apps users and those that also have Android or Windows devices.
Comments: 37 Responses to “Which Browser Is Better On Mac: Safari Or Chrome?”
Eric Kestler
5 years ago
Check out the new-ish “Brave” browser. Fast, secure, and ad blocking. I now use it for 99% of my browsing. Plus, has apps for iPhone and iPad too.
Gene
5 years ago
Years ago I switched to Apple. Apple is a closed system and in my opinion high on privacy. I did however use gmail as my email. Last year I bought an iPad online from Apple. I got an email from Apple confirming it. A few days later I got an email from Google congratulating me on my purchase and encouraging me to load it up with Google apps. That was the last straw. Monitoring my email! I took the 3 plus months to change email to iCloud. We, the users are Google's product. SAD and BAD
Arnie Keller
5 years ago
Whatever Chrome's merits, it comes from Google, a company slightly less intrusive than Facebook. No way will I run Chrome.
Luis Loreto
5 years ago
Thanks again, Gary. Since you use Safari, yesterday I was asking my self the question you answered today. Respect to Brave, for me it is changing a group of unwanted aids for another group.
Arthur Streatfield
5 years ago
Whats wrong with Opera? I'm not a techie, but I've found it intuitive, quick and easy.
Doyle LaBron
5 years ago
I really like Safari over Chrome because the encryption is better. The only problem I have is Safari seems to freeze a lot and I have to go to force quit so I can continue. This is forcing me to go back to Firefox. It doesn’t seem to freeze up as much.
Marcia Karon
5 years ago
I use both, and find that Safari is much slower, but that could be an issue with my computer, since that beach ball is always rolling. I even had a Apple service person capture my computer to find out why- and he couldn't.
Itasara
5 years ago
Use Safari most of time. However some sights only work with Chrome. Husband tried for hours trying to fill out a document for work. Finally able to call the place who put out the form to find out it didn’t work on Safari and never mentioned this on their form. It’s like everybody assumes one is going to use Chrome.
Harry
5 years ago
Chrome has built in superb simultaneous language translator- Safari has none.
Nancy
5 years ago
My Bank program only comes in on Chrome. Otherwise it is Safari, which seems to be slower with a lot of the ball at times
A Lori
5 years ago
Safari stopped supporting Sling TV quite a while ago but it runs with Chrome.
I prefer minimal advertising following me around:). BTW nice touch with Doris Day.
John
5 years ago
I pay more for a Mac. I only use safari. You want pop ups, intrusion, bugs, etc., run chrome or buy a non apple product. No thanks, I will buy a new Mac every few years to mainly use it for the internet, photos e-mail and the Numbers program.
Larry
5 years ago
I use Safari for most everything and occasionally pop over to Chrome or Firefox if I have trouble with a page or need a specific extension that only works in the other browser. One thing I found makes it super easy to switch to the other browsers is to turn on the Develop menu in Safari. There you can use the "Open Page With" and it will show you all your other browsers. To turn on the Develop menu, go to Safari Preferences, Advanced tab, and check the box at the bottom of the dialog box.
Larry Thaxton
5 years ago
Getting refunds on my Penfed credit card works on Chrome. Will not work on safari.
Lee: Firefox is a minor player on macOS, having less than 7% of the market. I don't even use it. What do you see as the advantage to Firefox over Safari?
Rob
5 years ago
Eric, I tried the Brave browser and liked it a lot - until I discovered that they do not (yet) support opening a New Tab to the URL of your choice. I prefer to open new tabs to google.com. It seems odd that this can't be done, when the other browsers do this easily, but that's an admitted Open Issue on Brave's support page. Until they fix this, I'm not inclined to switch over, because I don't want to be locked into their dashboard (or any other extension's dashboard, like Momentum).
Rosemary
5 years ago
Safari often doesn't work with airline bookings or with seeing seating arrangements at concerts etc. through Ticketmaster. Firefox works for those purposes. I don't use Chrome but have been wondering about it so thanks for this topic posting.
Rosemary: I'm made many many airline reservations with Safari using many major airline sites and some travel sites and services. Never had a problem. I have bought tickets with Ticketmaster too. When was the last time you tried?
Lali Raj
5 years ago
Thanks for the suggestions. I normally use Safari browser. I just want to know for FaceBook which is better Safari or Chrome?
Thanks Gary,
Lali
Lali: I use Safari. But watch the video to learn advantages and disadvantages. For instance, Safari may have a significant advantage if you want to conserve battery on a MacBook.
Tom
5 years ago
I use Safari most of the time but am forced to switch to Chrome to use certain software that I have no control over. Is there a SIMPLER way to synch bookmarks.
Tom: Sync between Safari and Chrome? No. But if you only need Chrome for one task, then you really don't need bookmarks.
Eytan
5 years ago
Larry Thaxton, I have Penfed and have found that if you disable content blockers for the Penfed site and disable the blocking of pop-up windows for Penfed then this allows many of the things that do not work in Penfed to work...
Eytan
5 years ago
On that same note to many of you - if a site does not work in Safari try to disable content blockers, and even more importantly, allow pop-up windows, to fix issues. I find that banking, ticket, etc sites often fail with the pop-up window blocking
Rosemary
5 years ago
I tried to change my seat with Air Canada today and got the spinning ball. Worked fine with Firefox. Last year WestJets site wouldn’t work with Safari. Their tech people said to switch to Chrome but I made it work with Firefox. I’m on an older iMac (2009) running El Captain. Perhaps that’s the issue.
Ernesto
5 years ago
I prefer Safari on the Mac. Although for way better performance and usability I prefer Opera as a secondary browser over Chrome. Although it’s also a WebKit browser. It has such a lot of features built in. Works way faster then Chrome. It doesn’t steal your user data(which you agreed on as soon as you installed chrome, even when you are not logged in) has a battery saver mode. And a turbo mode. And built in adblocker and vpn. Especially recommended on Windows and Linux. But works good on Mac too
Glud
5 years ago
Give Cliqz(off Mozilla) and /or Opera which has its own VPN......are lesser memory hogs.
Marina Meyer
5 years ago
What’s the difference in using safari instead of chrome if I the search engines in the app I have a choice of Google yahoo or Bing or DuckDuckGo to choose from. Hope you understand my question.
Marina: Not sure what you mean. Those are just the search engines. You may use those as a first step to get somewhere, but then you are at another site. The browser makes a difference in speed, features, energy consumption, etc.
Mac Carter
5 years ago
I too would like to see / hear a comparison between Firefox and Safari. I use Firefox 99% of the time. It is VERY fast and has extensive privacy features. The big difference is that Firefox has an excellent Bookmarks manager that syncs across all of my devices. This feature has a very effective and easy to use sorting feature, whereas Safari requires manual sorting. And it is also easy to import my Firefox bookmarks HTML file into my Safari "Favorites".
Jasper
5 years ago
I use Firefox at work because some internal systems (e.g., Agresso) won’t work nicely with Safari, which is my default browser.
I don’t like to even have Chrome installed because I noticed a lot of Google stuff going on behind the scenes (in Activity Monitor or the console logs, I think). Any idea what that stuff all is?
Steve Maynard
5 years ago
I prefer Safari and use it as my primary browser. But I have found Firefox very helpful for a couple of things. First, I am able to download YouTube and other videos and capture live webcasts with it.
Apple/Safari doesn't seem to have this capability (as far as I can tell) because of their concerns over copyright infringements, etc.
Secondly, in some applications (e.g. like building WP websites using the Divi Builder) Safari doesn't seem to work very efficiently with them.
Tom: No. Looks to be a very small marketshare (0.05% according to Wikipedia).
Sandra Warnken
5 years ago
I switched to firefox a long time ago because it was faster than Safari and or some reason the online brokerage service I use daily does not always load with Safari and will with Firefox. Our internet comes from radio transmission. It took the brokerage a long time to add support for Mac. A techie in my Mac group touted Brave. I use it a lot now. Ads are gone.
Randy Sikes
5 years ago
Regarding use of Safari with PenFed rewards card, Safari works fine for me when redeeming points and with all functions for the PenFed website. The user above who reported a problem may have a setting enabled (perhaps content blocker or some other setting) that causes the problem.
Check out the new-ish “Brave” browser. Fast, secure, and ad blocking. I now use it for 99% of my browsing. Plus, has apps for iPhone and iPad too.
Years ago I switched to Apple. Apple is a closed system and in my opinion high on privacy. I did however use gmail as my email. Last year I bought an iPad online from Apple. I got an email from Apple confirming it. A few days later I got an email from Google congratulating me on my purchase and encouraging me to load it up with Google apps. That was the last straw. Monitoring my email! I took the 3 plus months to change email to iCloud. We, the users are Google's product. SAD and BAD
Whatever Chrome's merits, it comes from Google, a company slightly less intrusive than Facebook. No way will I run Chrome.
Thanks again, Gary. Since you use Safari, yesterday I was asking my self the question you answered today. Respect to Brave, for me it is changing a group of unwanted aids for another group.
Whats wrong with Opera? I'm not a techie, but I've found it intuitive, quick and easy.
I really like Safari over Chrome because the encryption is better. The only problem I have is Safari seems to freeze a lot and I have to go to force quit so I can continue. This is forcing me to go back to Firefox. It doesn’t seem to freeze up as much.
I use both, and find that Safari is much slower, but that could be an issue with my computer, since that beach ball is always rolling. I even had a Apple service person capture my computer to find out why- and he couldn't.
Use Safari most of time. However some sights only work with Chrome. Husband tried for hours trying to fill out a document for work. Finally able to call the place who put out the form to find out it didn’t work on Safari and never mentioned this on their form. It’s like everybody assumes one is going to use Chrome.
Chrome has built in superb simultaneous language translator- Safari has none.
My Bank program only comes in on Chrome. Otherwise it is Safari, which seems to be slower with a lot of the ball at times
Safari stopped supporting Sling TV quite a while ago but it runs with Chrome.
I prefer minimal advertising following me around:). BTW nice touch with Doris Day.
I pay more for a Mac. I only use safari. You want pop ups, intrusion, bugs, etc., run chrome or buy a non apple product. No thanks, I will buy a new Mac every few years to mainly use it for the internet, photos e-mail and the Numbers program.
I use Safari for most everything and occasionally pop over to Chrome or Firefox if I have trouble with a page or need a specific extension that only works in the other browser. One thing I found makes it super easy to switch to the other browsers is to turn on the Develop menu in Safari. There you can use the "Open Page With" and it will show you all your other browsers. To turn on the Develop menu, go to Safari Preferences, Advanced tab, and check the box at the bottom of the dialog box.
Getting refunds on my Penfed credit card works on Chrome. Will not work on safari.
How about comparing Firefox with Safari? Thanks.
Lee: Firefox is a minor player on macOS, having less than 7% of the market. I don't even use it. What do you see as the advantage to Firefox over Safari?
Eric, I tried the Brave browser and liked it a lot - until I discovered that they do not (yet) support opening a New Tab to the URL of your choice. I prefer to open new tabs to google.com. It seems odd that this can't be done, when the other browsers do this easily, but that's an admitted Open Issue on Brave's support page. Until they fix this, I'm not inclined to switch over, because I don't want to be locked into their dashboard (or any other extension's dashboard, like Momentum).
Safari often doesn't work with airline bookings or with seeing seating arrangements at concerts etc. through Ticketmaster. Firefox works for those purposes. I don't use Chrome but have been wondering about it so thanks for this topic posting.
Rosemary: I'm made many many airline reservations with Safari using many major airline sites and some travel sites and services. Never had a problem. I have bought tickets with Ticketmaster too. When was the last time you tried?
Thanks for the suggestions. I normally use Safari browser. I just want to know for FaceBook which is better Safari or Chrome?
Thanks Gary,
Lali
Lali: I use Safari. But watch the video to learn advantages and disadvantages. For instance, Safari may have a significant advantage if you want to conserve battery on a MacBook.
I use Safari most of the time but am forced to switch to Chrome to use certain software that I have no control over. Is there a SIMPLER way to synch bookmarks.
Tom: Sync between Safari and Chrome? No. But if you only need Chrome for one task, then you really don't need bookmarks.
Larry Thaxton, I have Penfed and have found that if you disable content blockers for the Penfed site and disable the blocking of pop-up windows for Penfed then this allows many of the things that do not work in Penfed to work...
On that same note to many of you - if a site does not work in Safari try to disable content blockers, and even more importantly, allow pop-up windows, to fix issues. I find that banking, ticket, etc sites often fail with the pop-up window blocking
I tried to change my seat with Air Canada today and got the spinning ball. Worked fine with Firefox. Last year WestJets site wouldn’t work with Safari. Their tech people said to switch to Chrome but I made it work with Firefox. I’m on an older iMac (2009) running El Captain. Perhaps that’s the issue.
I prefer Safari on the Mac. Although for way better performance and usability I prefer Opera as a secondary browser over Chrome. Although it’s also a WebKit browser. It has such a lot of features built in. Works way faster then Chrome. It doesn’t steal your user data(which you agreed on as soon as you installed chrome, even when you are not logged in) has a battery saver mode. And a turbo mode. And built in adblocker and vpn. Especially recommended on Windows and Linux. But works good on Mac too
Give Cliqz(off Mozilla) and /or Opera which has its own VPN......are lesser memory hogs.
What’s the difference in using safari instead of chrome if I the search engines in the app I have a choice of Google yahoo or Bing or DuckDuckGo to choose from. Hope you understand my question.
Marina: Not sure what you mean. Those are just the search engines. You may use those as a first step to get somewhere, but then you are at another site. The browser makes a difference in speed, features, energy consumption, etc.
I too would like to see / hear a comparison between Firefox and Safari. I use Firefox 99% of the time. It is VERY fast and has extensive privacy features. The big difference is that Firefox has an excellent Bookmarks manager that syncs across all of my devices. This feature has a very effective and easy to use sorting feature, whereas Safari requires manual sorting. And it is also easy to import my Firefox bookmarks HTML file into my Safari "Favorites".
I use Firefox at work because some internal systems (e.g., Agresso) won’t work nicely with Safari, which is my default browser.
I don’t like to even have Chrome installed because I noticed a lot of Google stuff going on behind the scenes (in Activity Monitor or the console logs, I think). Any idea what that stuff all is?
I prefer Safari and use it as my primary browser. But I have found Firefox very helpful for a couple of things. First, I am able to download YouTube and other videos and capture live webcasts with it.
Apple/Safari doesn't seem to have this capability (as far as I can tell) because of their concerns over copyright infringements, etc.
Secondly, in some applications (e.g. like building WP websites using the Divi Builder) Safari doesn't seem to work very efficiently with them.
Have you every used Vivaldi?
Tom: No. Looks to be a very small marketshare (0.05% according to Wikipedia).
I switched to firefox a long time ago because it was faster than Safari and or some reason the online brokerage service I use daily does not always load with Safari and will with Firefox. Our internet comes from radio transmission. It took the brokerage a long time to add support for Mac. A techie in my Mac group touted Brave. I use it a lot now. Ads are gone.
Regarding use of Safari with PenFed rewards card, Safari works fine for me when redeeming points and with all functions for the PenFed website. The user above who reported a problem may have a setting enabled (perhaps content blocker or some other setting) that causes the problem.