MacOS is not my platform of choice. What I prefer is Linux. However, if I’m editing videos, I use my iMac.
And with this machine, I had been using the built-in browser, Safari, for years. However, as the days went by, I became more and more frustrated with Safari and eventually turned to another browser.
Let me explain.
Safari is good, but…
Safari is a good browser. It has features I like (like excellent tab management) and it’s one of the best options for Apple laptops because it’s optimized for macOS battery life. When I bought my first MacBook Pro (I think it was 2016), every time I tried to use a different browser, I noticed the battery life dropped significantly. For this reason, I refused to use any browser other than Apple’s as my default browser.
But things have changed. Most browsers today don’t drain the battery as seriously as they used to. Of course, this battery consumption was not entirely attributable to these third-party browsers. The first MacBook Pro I bought simply had unacceptable battery life. Today, no matter what browser I use, the battery life of my MacBook Pro (with Apple Silicon) is exceptional.
But beyond the battery drain, Safari frustrates me to no end for two other reasons.
The first is the randomness of the browser when it comes to opening links from other applications. Sometimes the application opens the link in the window I’m using. Other times, the clicked link opens a new window. And it doesn’t matter that I set Safari to always open links from other apps in a new tab.
Certainly, Safari has a handy feature, Merge Windows, which allows you to merge all open windows into one. But I shouldn’t have to.
And that’s not the biggest frustration.
Every day I visit a site and Safari inevitably displays a message that the site is using too much memory. In this case, the site is most often reloaded (which means I lose my place). Although this seems random, it happens far too often to be acceptable.
To make matters worse, there is nothing that can be done. It is not possible to increase the amount of memory used by Safari and block the warning. And since many sites are very poorly designed and developed, this behavior is not going to stop.
What I use instead (yes it’s Opera)
Combine these two problems and you get a very (and regularly) frustrated user. For this reason, Safari is no longer my default browser on MacOS. It is replaced by… Opera.
The new Opera browser does not suffer from Safari’s idiosyncrasies. Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Why Opera? First of all, Opera has become my default browser on Linux (which I use throughout the day). So it makes perfect sense that it is my default browser on MacOS. Additionally, Opera’s tab management is better than Safari’s. Additionally, Opera’s recent redesign gives it significantly better performance than Safari. It also has a more attractive user interface and all the features I need.
Best of all, it doesn’t force pages to reload because it judges a site is using too much memory. This means that whatever I’m reading or working on won’t be interrupted by that ridiculous pop-up window.
Apple should be able to do better with Safari. But in the meantime, I can’t continue working with a browser that doesn’t work with me.
If you’re using MacOS, I recommend ditching Safari as your default browser and trying Opera. It runs flawlessly on MacOS and doesn’t have those frustrating quirks that inevitably interrupt what you’re doing to remind you that it’s not quite up to the task.
Source: “ZDNet.com”