“Like most Web-heads I spent years living in Chrome, but now feel less comfy there, because Google. I use many browsers but these days my daily driver is Safari. I’m pretty happy with it but there’s ugly stuff hiding in its corners that needs to be cleaned up.” https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/02/26/Safari-Cleanup
@timbray there's no Safari on Linux or Android. Too bad Firefox sullied their brand with some boneheaded decisions. But you don't have to use a Google version of Chrome.
The main problem is all browsers are an open cesspit of zero-day security issues just waiting to be exposed and plenty of ones hiding in open sight - like extensions.
@timbray I don't see any mention of you exploring Safari's Tab Groups, have you tried them? They're kind-of a bookmark set of tabs and you can switch between the unnamed group and a named set
Closing the window of a named set allows you to reopen it later, starting an unnamed set, switching to a named set, then closing the window gives a warning about closing open tabs from the unnamed set
They don't solve the problem of "oops I accidentally closed a tab I wanted" though
@timbray Good post, as always. A tricky and ever-changing tech front; browsers.
One thing I would lean more heavily into (especially for compartmentalizing big tech & tracking) is using Safari Profiles or Firefox containers. They take a while to setup to your preference, but once done, it nicely firewalls identities.
I prefer Safari as a browser but Firefox's containers are the better implementation. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
@timbray I've been using Orion (by Kagi) as a Safari replacement for a few weeks. Its handling of tabs (and tab hierarchies) is really nice and it remembers my windows between sessions (and puts old tabs to "sleep" in the background). Just be sure to turn off "external link preview" in the "browsing" tab of settings. https://kagi.com/orion/
@timbray for the "accidentally quitting Safari” scenario: I remapped the Safari keyboard shortcuts for Quit for exactly this reason. System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > App Shortcuts
Edited 16d ago
@timbray It’s about two years ago now that @jensimmons over at Apple asked developers what their WebKit/Safari gripes were and that has definitely paid off. It’s a different browser now.