10 Hacks Every Safari User Should Know

If you are the type of person who only uses Safari to download Chrome, you need to think twice. For a Mac user, Safari is perhaps the best browser out there (yes, even better than Chrome). It’s fast, secure, doesn’t distort under most loads, sips RAM instead of chewing it up, and it will also help your battery last longer. And yes, there are even extensions and ad blockers that work natively in Safari.

It’s time to take a fresh look at Safari and use all its hidden features and intelligence to improve your browsing.

Eliminate ads and other distracting elements

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

When this feature came out, it became a bit of a meme on TikTok. In case you haven’t heard, Safari has a new Hide Distracting Elements feature that can remove just about anything on a web page. You will find in the page options menu (the – icon to the left of the address bar). After enabling it, try clicking on a pop-up menu, autoplay video, newsletter box, or just about anything else. He will be banned from your screen and there will even be a little animation showing him disappearing as if he had just been photographed by Thanos. And Safari will remember your snap, so it won’t appear the next time you visit that site on your Mac, or even on your iPhone or iPad. And if you’re feeling more like Iron Man, yes, you can undo your shots.

Give Safari a Decent Ad Blocker

Credit: Justin Pot

For ad blocking, Firefox and Chrome have the uBlock Origin extension. Then there are browsers like Brave and Opera, which have built-in ad blocking. Safari has always suffered in this regard. There has 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 in terms of performance and blocking capabilities.

But now it seems there is finally a decent alternative, called wBlock. I’ve been using it since my colleague, Justin Pot, wrote about it, and I’m happy to say that it finally makes Safari’s ad blocking experience comparable to some of the biggest browsers. And the best? wBlock is free and open source.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Before development was suspended, I loved the Arc browser. But since the company shut it down, I’ve become jaded and haven’t really started using alternatives like Zen Browser. The biggest features I miss in Arc are workspaces and vertical tabs. But now Safari offers them too. In Safari, you can now create tab groups, which can contain as many tabs as you want. I use them as workspaces. One group for reading long articles, another for researching travel, etc.

And while I’m in a tab group, I also like to do it with the sidebar open (click the sidebar button next to the Back and Forward buttons), which gives me an Arc-like vertical tab experience. It’s not exactly like Arc, because the horizontal tab bar at the top doesn’t disappear. But having a vertical list of tabs is always useful. The same goes for the fact that the tab groups sync with my iPhone and iPad, allowing me to continue my searches there as well.

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

The new design of Master Safari for iPhone

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Safari was one of the few apps to get a major 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 overhaul, but I’ll highlight some of my favorites here.

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

• Tap and hold the address bar: A lot of things are hidden here. You can copy a link, paste it from your clipboard, move to another tab group, close tabs, or close all tabs.

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

• Pin tabs: Long-press a website in the tab screen, then choose the Pin Tab option to pin the website to the top of your browser.

Bring back the old iPhone tab bar

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If you don’t like the iPhone’s new compact tab bar or its gestures, you can always go back to the way things were. Go to Settings > Applications > Safari > Tabs. Go to Down option to bring the bottom toolbar expanded, or to go further back in time, use the option High option.

Lead distinct browsing lives using profiles

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

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

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

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

Turn your favorite sites into apps

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

On Mac, you can use Safari to turn any frequently used website into a full-fledged application. It will appear in the Dock and in the application switcher. It’s still the same website, but it will have its own shortcut on your Mac’s interface, making it easier to use. If you use your Mac for retail or any type of specialized work done through a website, this can be very handy.

To do this, visit a website, click on the Share button, then click Add to Dock. Your connections will be automatically synchronized, as will your extensions. The toolbar will also be colored according to the website colors.

You can also do this on iPhone, by going to a site, pressing the button Share button, pressing Moreand pressing Add to Home Screen. The website logo will appear as an “app” on your home screen and serve as a shortcut to the site.

Automatically close open tabs

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

I love opening tabs, but I hate closing them. This means it’s easy for me to reach the 500 tab limit in Safari. So I activated the option that automatically closes tabs older than 30 days. You can do this by going to Settings > Applications > Safari > Close tabs. You can choose between one day, one week or one month.

Listen to a page out loud

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

You may be familiar with Safari’s Reader mode, which may be the best in the industry. But there is another feature hidden in the Page settings option. Press the Llisten to Page and Safari will instantly start reading aloud the site you’re on. However, before doing this, I recommend switching to Reader mode first, so that the text-to-speech isn’t picked up by 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 the time to customize its appearance and operation. Start by opening the start page, then click the button To modify in the lower right corner to enable or disable the sections you want to see. I suggest adding sections for your Favorites, Reading List, iCloud Tabs, and Recently Closed Tabs. You can also change the background to any color you want.

If you don’t like a cluttered start page, you can also try the Bonjourr Safari extension. This is a splash page replacement that I’ve been using for months now. It automatically alternates between serene 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 both iPhone and Mac.