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I’ve been using Safari full time for a week. I’m not switching back. Here’s my experience so far 🧵

First, I love compact mode. Vertical space is king on laptops, and this navbar feels way more open. Plus, the smart use of theme color makes the page blend into the UI nicely 👍

Performance: Anecdotally, I’ve found Safari is smoother rendering HTML and CSS, while Chrome excels with JS-heavy tasks. Makes Safari the king for content reading.

Features: Tab groups and reader mode are here, which is all I really need. Plus, integration with the new MacOS Passwords app is *chef’s kiss.* Cancelled my 1Password subscription.

Dev tools: I was warned that I’d miss Chrome devtools. The lack of extensions like React is a crime. Still, the essentials are here: CSS grid lines, quick select with cmd + shift + C, good storage and network tabs. It also feels less cluttered.

The biggest flaw? It’s not chromium. And you pay the price on certain sites. Quirk count so far: - CVS checkout shows white screen of death - Lower-quality audio watching video on TED - Poor scroll perf on YouTube with a large monitor

That said, I’m happy enough to keep using Safari. I like tools that do exactly what I need without extra bloat, and Safari fits the bill better than most. I’ll share updates as I go 🧭

I’ll also mention some other browsers I used: - Zen - love the premise, don’t love the UX. Animations and UI elements aren’t *quite* native, and FF extensions like pw autofill feel second-rate - Arc - used this for years, and the recent news got me exploring. It’s still great and I may come back!

did you try Edge?

New Edge is not the same at all. It's like Chrome, but with better UI. The vertical tabs are fantastic, with vertical tabs groups, making them so useful, kinda like a file folder explorer with one-level of folders (groups), you can still read titles of all the tabs no matter how many.

Oh! And workspaces in Edge, a built-in session saver. Done with a set of tabs/groups? Save it as a workspace and close the window, open it back later (all tabs retain their browsing history). I tried Safari but Edge is more useful in this regard. Take the new Chredge for a spin!

One more benefit is that Chredge (Chromium Edge) works in any OS. Can't take Safari with you onto a Windows laptop. But with Edge, you can sync to your account and open workspace sessions anywhere. You can also share and collaborate with others in workspaces, multiplayer. Not doable in 🧭 yet

The mobile app is not good though 👀 Firefox on mobile is the best so far.

Ah yeah, the mobile Edge is still with a UX more like mobile Chrome. I still use Chrome on my Android, but Edge on Desktop.