If you’re the type of person who only uses Safari to download Chrome, you need to think again. For a Mac user, Safari might be the best browser out there (yes, even better than Chrome). It’s fast, secure, doesn’t stall under heavy loads, sips RAM instead of slurping it, and will help your battery last longer, too. And yes, there are even extensions and ad blockers that work natively in Safari.

It’s time to take another look at Safari, and use all its hidden features and smarts to improve your browsing.

Blast ads and other annoying stuff

Credit: Khumesh Pathak

When this feature came out, it became a bit of a meme on TechTalk. If you haven’t heard, Safari has a new Unhide Objects feature that can zip pretty much anything on a web page out of existence. You will find in the page options menu (the – from icon to the left of the address bar). After activating it, try clicking on the pop-up menu, video, newsletter box or something else. It will be removed from your screen, and there will even be a little animation of it disappearing like it’s just been snatched by Thanos. And Safari will remember your Snap, so it won’t show up the next time you visit the site on your Mac, or even your iPhone or iPad. And if you’re feeling like Iron Man, yes, you can cancel your Snap.

Give Safari a decent ad blocker

Credit: Justin Pott

For ad blocking, Firefox and Chrome have it ublock origin Extensions Then there are browsers like Brave and Opera, which come with built-in bulk advertising. Safari has always suffered in this regard. There’s never really been a real alternative to Ublock available for Safari. There is a version of UBlock Origin for Safari, but it doesn’t use Safari’s own framework for ad blocking, so it suffers when it comes to performance and blocking capabilities.

But now it looks like there’s finally a decent alternative, called W Block. I’ve been using it since my colleague, Justin Pott, wrote about it, and I’m happy to say that Safari’s ad-blocking experience is finally on par with some of the major browsers. And the best part? WBlock is free and open source.

Credit: Khumesh Pathak

Before development was suspended, I loved Arc Browser. But since the company discontinued it, I’ve been left wondering, and I haven’t really started using alternatives like ZenBrowser. The biggest features I miss from Arc are workspaces and vertical tabs. But now, Safari has too. In Safari, you can now create tab groups, which can contain as many tabs as you want. I use them as my workspaces. One group for reading long articles, another for travel research, and so on.

And when I’m in a tab group, I also want to do this with the sidebar open (Click the sidebar button next to the Back and Forward buttons), which gives me the same vertical tabs experience as Arc. It’s not exactly like Arc, because the horizontal tab bar up top doesn’t disappear. But having a vertical list of tabs still helps. So there’s also the fact that Tab Groups syncs with my iPhone and iPad, so I can take my research there as well.

To create a new tab group, click New tab group button at the top of the sidebar. Or you can select multiple tabs, right-click, and choose move Tab group > New tab group On iPhone, open the tab switcher, tap Menu button at the top, and select New empty tab group to begin with.

New design of Master Safari for iPhone

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Safari was one of the few apps that saw a significant design update in iOS 26, with a redesigned bottom bar. Lifehacker has a detailed guide to all the new hidden gestures and features in Safari’s iOS 26 redesign, but I’ll highlight some of my favorites here.

• Swipe to switch tabs: To quickly switch between tabs, just swipe left or right on the address bar.

• Press and hold the address bar: There is a lot hidden here. You can copy a link, paste it from your clipboard, switch to another tab group, close tabs, or close all tabs.

• Swipe on the address bar: Swipe on the address bar to show all open tabs. From here, you can swipe left or right to switch between tab groups. From the top menu, you can easily copy links for all open tabs.

• Pin tabs: Tap and hold a website from the Tabs screen, and choose the Pin tab option to pin the website to the top of your browser.

Bring back the iPhone’s old tab bar

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If you don’t like iPhone’s new compact tab bar or its gestures, you can still go back to the way things were before. go Settings > Apps > Safari > Tabs. Switch to below Go with the option to bring back the extended bottom toolbar, or to go further back in time above option

Lead separate browsing lives using profiles

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It’s not as obvious as it is in Chrome, but Safari also has profiles that sync between iPhone, iPad, and Mac. you can use Profiles To keep your work and personal life separate. This can also be useful if you and your spouse use the same Mac.

Profiles will completely isolate your browsing from other users, including logins, cookies, browsing history, tab groups, favorites and even extensions.

To set one up for Safari on a Mac, go to Settings > Profiles. On iPhone, go to Settings > Apps > Safari > Profiles And tap New profile. Give it a name, and be sure to choose an icon and color. This will color the background of the start page, so it will be easier to know which profile you are in.

Turn your favorite sites into apps

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On a Mac, you can use Safari to turn any frequently used website into your app. It will show in the dock and app switcher. It’s still the same website, but it’ll have its own shortcut on your Mac’s interface, making it easier to use. If you use your Mac for retail, or any kind of specialized work that comes through a website, this can be really handy.

To do this, go to a website, click on it Share it button, and click Add to dock. Your logins will sync automatically, and so will your extensions. The toolbar will also be colored based on the website colors.

You can also do this on iPhone, by navigating to a site, tapping Share it Buttons, tapping moreand tapping Add to home screen. The website’s logo will appear on your home screen as an “app”, and it will act as a shortcut to the site.

Automatically close open tabs

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I love opening tabs, but I hate closing them. This means it’s easy for me to hit the 500 tab limit in Safari. So I enabled the option that automatically closes tabs that are older than 30 days. You can do this by doing this Settings > Apps > Safari > Closed tabs. You can choose between a day, a week, or a month.

Listen to a page out loud

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You may be familiar with Safari’s Reader Mode, which is probably the best in the business. But there is another feature hidden in it Page Settings Tap Option Listen on the page button, and Safari will immediately start reading the site you’re on out loud. Before doing that, though, I’d recommend switching to reader mode first, so text-to-speech doesn’t get stuck on ads or other distractions.

Customize or change the Safari start page

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Every time you open Safari, or a new tab, you see the browser’s default start page. Let’s take some time to see how it looks and works. First, open the Start page, then click on it edit To enable or disable the button in the bottom right corner which sections you want to see. I recommend adding sections for your favorites, reading list, iCloud tabs, and recently closed tabs. You can also change the background to any color you like.

If you don’t like overloaded start page, you can also try Bonjour Safari Extension. This is a Start Page alternative I’ve used for months. It automatically cycles between calm backgrounds while displaying the time and weather. You can also add quick shortcuts for your frequently visited sites. It’s also fully customizable, and looks great on iPhone as well as Mac.