Ask HN: Any compelling reason to use Safari in 2022? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any compelling reason to use Safari in 2022?

2 pointsbehnamoh12 comments

I've used Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Opera, etc. But every time I use Safari it just feels like an app with gimmicks and fancy UI but without actually offering the power I need. Most of it is due to how Safari handles extensions: I don't want each extension to be installed like an `app' on macOS! And I certainly don't want to install extensions through App Store because it all feels too "sandboxy". On top of that, some of my shortcuts don't work there, e.g., going back is CMD-← in Chrome, but CMD-[ in Safari.

Why should I consider Safari in 2022? Are there privacy reasons? Better integration with Apple's ecosystem?

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Others gave some proper responses. Nobody mentioned battery, which is a pretty important aspect imo. Firefox will drain your battery in 3 hours, if you use Safari you can at least double that amount. Also, I don’t know if this only happens to me but, if I connect my Mac (i9, 16” 2019) in clamshell mode to my 4k monitor it’s going to get super hot with Firefox but it won’t with Safari. If this does not matter to you then Firefox is the best out there. I keep them both and use them accordingly.

Firefox is still the only contender to the Chromium dominance IMO. Safari is way to much locked into the MacOs ecosystem and the performance is not great compared to Chromium/FF in my experience - anecdotal data

Plus it lacks so many features that people think its intentional

I just wiped and reinstalled my mac after years of neglect. Fired up safari to download some programs and basically every page had issues.

The only reason to use Safari on a laptop these days is to download another browser.

I don't remember ever having experienced this problem with Safari. Could you point me to a few of these pages?

https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+104,edge+104,safari+15.6...

Both privacy and integration.

Any compelling reasons not to use Safari? The sites I work on have large percentages of Safari users, the rest mainly Chrome. Almost none with FF. I’m going to test with Safari anyway. Works fine for me.

Its noticeably slower, gets blown out of the water on browser benchmarks like browserbench, has no interface theming capability whatsoever, the unconvential tab shape/sizing is just weird, barely has any extensions and the ones that do exist usually cost money in the App Store.

I don’t care about browser benchmarks, it works fine for me, seems pretty much the same as Chrome. I don’t care about UI theming or tab shapes either. I also don’t bother with extensions. Everyone has their own needs and desires.

Safari integrates well with iOS and MacOS, which I like. It has good privacy and security, also integrated with the Apple ecosystem. My other computer is a Chromebook, which only runs Chrome, and that works well too.

How do you manage saved passwords between Safari and Chrome?

LastPass

Safari seems to be the only optimized iOS browser. I believe for security every iOS browser is a rewrite of the Safari engine anyway. Might as well go straight to the source then. Of course for desktop Firefox is the only browser with adequate performance and development tools.

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