safari webkit windows

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Posted on Mar 10, 2023

Running the Latest Safari WebKit on Windows

Safari runs on windows.

I can't believe it took me this long to figure this out, but it's totally possible to run the latest WebKit/Safari on Windows locally and debug issues that would otherwise require emulation, a remote machines or a Mac!

Not only can it be done but it's extremely easy to do, and in this article I will go over the 2 simplest ways to get up and running.

Method #1: Playwright CLI

This first method is by far the easiest as it only requires having Node.js installed which comes with npm/npx. Once you have Node.js installed you will need to run the Playwright command to download the browsers.

Open up the Command Prompt and type npx playwright install , then once this is done you can open up a url in WebKit by running the follow command npx playwright wk https://dustinbrett.com/ , as described in the docs for Command line tools -> Open Pages .

Method #2: Download Build Artifacts

As described in the Webkit Wiki , the files required are built often and can be easily downloaded and combined.

The first file that is needed comes from the Webkit CI Builders , specifically WinCairo-64-bit-Release-Build .

Open the latest green build and download the zip file mentioned after S3 URL on the transfer-to-s3 step.

Now you will need to download one more zip file from the WebKitForWindows Releases by downloading WebKitRequirementsWin64.zip from the Assets section of the most recent release.

Then extract both files to the same folder so that the bin64 folders become combined. All other folders can be deleted as they are not needed. Go into the combined bin64 folder and launch MiniBrowser.exe and you are up and running.

This version has more features compared to the Playwright one and allows turning on and off Experimental & Internal Debug Features.

Both versions have the familiar Web Inspector which is extremely helpful to have locally.

Companion Video

I thought this was such a useful trick that I also made a video showing how to do it, feel free to check it out!

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Running WebKit on Windows

Safari 5.1, back in 2010, was the last WebKit browser that somebody released for the Windows platform. Since then debugging things in WebKit came down to either buying a whole Mac or using a remote Safari in Browserstack .

Funnily enough, the WebKit team kept pumping out nightly builds for Windows together with those for the other platforms. It's just that Apple didn't want to invest anymore time in providing a browser UI around it. But it is still perfectly possible to get WebKit on Windows to start, with almost all the engine features of the newest Safari.

There are two ways to do so: a manual and an automated one.

Alexander Skachkov was kind enough to describe all required steps of the manual way in a blog post three years ago . The only update from my side would be to not install Cygwin and Apple iTunes, as both are monsters, but instead to download the so-called "WebkitForWindows WebKitRequirements " as ZIP and to put the content of their bin64 folder into the one with the same name of your WebKit-Cairo folder. Afterwards you run MiniBrowser.exe and should be greeted with a spartan browser window.

But you probably don't wanna jump through the hoops of manual installation, especially not each and everytime you need to upgrade WebKit. The automated way is to use " Playwright ". Playwright is basically what Puppeteer is for Chrome, but for Chrome, Firefox and Safari at the same time. All you need to get going is npm . Then you run it like this:

The wk parameter indicating that you wanna use WebKit. Then you are greeted with this window:

Giving it a spin on html5test.com tells me that it trails Safari by quite a bit (492 vs 416 points). But the areas affected are basically due to proprietary things or the missing browser chrome and OS integration around it:

• color input
• fullscreen support
• Web Notifications
• gamepad support
• Pointer Lock API
• Web Audio API
• Speech Recognition
• Speech Synthesis
• video and audio codecs
• video streaming
• JPEG image export
• Webcam support
• Web Payments API
• Objectstore blob support

Looking though the list, only the missing video codec support is a bummer. The rest it pretty much irrelevant for the average site.

Webmentions

The web has changed drastically over the past decade: web apps have become more common, algorithms now dictate how most people receive content, and billions more people are now connected globally. Google has also become more dominant in that time, and has occasionally used its position in the web ecosystem and browser market in harmful ways. There have been many ideas for how to keep Google’s power in check, but here’s mine: Apple should make its Safari web browser cross-platform again.

You might recall that the Safari web browser used to be available for Microsoft Windows , in addition to macOS (then known as Mac OS X) and later iPhone and iPad. Apple discontinued the Windows version of Safari many years ago, but bringing it back now could provide one of the best alternatives to browsers built with Google’s Chromium engine.

Apple released the first version of the Safari web browser in January 2003, as part of Mac OS X 10.3 ‘Panther’, following the end of Microsoft’s five-year deal with Apple to keep Internet Explorer as the default web browser on Mac. Even though the web browser was new, the technology powering it was not — Apple used the KHTML rendering engine as a starting point to create Safari’s WebKit engine.

The browser was initially exclusive to Mac, but when the first iPhone arrived in 2007, it also included Safari. The first version for Windows, Safari 3.0, was released that same year. However, the Windows version wasn’t all that great . The initial release included a security vulnerability for arbitrary code execution, which was patched less than 48 hours later as Safari 3.0.1.

Safari 3.0 Beta on Windows (Credit: NetworkComputing.com)

Safari also felt out of place on Windows. Apple used the same (awful) compatibility layer from iTunes for Windows with the Safari port , which re-implemented the Cocoa UI, Core Foundation, Core Graphics libraries on top of Windows — similar to using Wine to run Windows programs on Linux. The result was an application that worked, but didn’t match the design or expected functionality of its host operating system.

Despite the early security issues and questionable software architecture, Safari for Windows was a decent web browser. Apple advertised it was “up to twice as fast” as Internet Explorer 7, and up to 1.6x the performance of Mozilla Firefox 2 (both supposedly tested on a Intel Core 2 Duo system with Windows XP and 1GB of RAM).

Apple continued to release new Safari versions for Mac and Windows, but when Safari 6.0 was released as part of Mac OS X Mountain Lion in 2012, a Windows version was missing. Apple later quietly removed the download links for Windows Safari, seemingly marking an end to the browser’s existence on non-Apple platforms. The final version was Safari 5.1, released in 2010.

Fast forward to 2022, and the web ecosystem is better in many ways, but also far from perfect. Web apps are more capable than ever before, mostly thanks to the accelerated development of new APIs in Google Chrome. However, Google now has significant influence over the course of web browsers — Opera and Microsoft dropped development of their own rendering engines to use the same Google’s Chromium engine, while newer contenders like Brave and Vivaldi used Chromium from the start.

Web browsers based on Chromium have the ability to make changes to the browser interface and engine, so Google doesn’t have complete control over how they work. Each step away from Google’s upstream code makes adopting new changes to Chromium more time-consuming, though. That makes development more burdensome, and more crucially, it can lead to security patches in Chromium taking a long time to show up in some browsers. One example was Kiwi Browser for Android, which was stuck on Chrome 77 for over a year.

The web needs a balance of powers to remain an open platform

The web needs a balance of powers to remain an open platform, but there are now only two major web browsers not based on Chromium: Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. Firefox uses its own Gecko engine, which has seen significant performance improvements in recent years. Safari still uses WebKit, and while much of Safari’s popularity comes from it being the only real browser allowed on iOS and iPadOS, it has also become a proper competitor to Chrome in recent years. Apple bringing Safari to more platforms could pull back some market share from Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers.

Christian Schaefer pointed out in a blog post last year that Apple still supports the WebKit engine on Windows, mostly for embedded applications and Microsoft’s Playright testing platform. Newer versions even dropped the iTunes-based monster of a compatibility layer, in favor of the cross-platform Cairo graphics library. However, these minimal builds of WebKit are only intended for site testing, and don’t have common browser features like sync, tabs, or extensions.

Playwright WebKit on Windows (Credit: Christian Schaefer)

There are reasons beyond the health of the open web for Apple to port Safari to more platforms. There are millions of people that use an iPhone or iPad, but use Windows PCs instead of Mac computers. Keeping Safari exclusive to macOS might encourage some of those people to buy a Mac, but Safari on Windows (and other platforms) could also act as a loss leader that encourages future Apple hardware purchases — much like the original iTunes for Windows nearly two decades ago. This is also a strategy that worked for Google: Chromebook sales were helped by the popularity of the Chrome browser, which itself only made Chrome more popular.

Apple has also been more willing in recent years to bring its services and applications to other platforms, even in just a limited fashion. iCloud is available for Windows, the iCloud web apps work in most web browsers, FaceTime calls can now be joined via link from non-Apple devices, Apple Music has an Android app, and so on.

Safari for Windows could give Chromium browsers some much-needed competition, while also opening up a more connected experience for Apple devices. There are still plenty of reasons for Apple to not do it, but I’d certainly like to see it happen.

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You might recall that the Safari web browser used to be available for Microsoft Windows in addition to macOS (then known as Mac OS X) and later iPhone and iPad. Apple discontinued the Windows version of Safari many years ago, but bringing it back now could provide one of the best alternatives to browsers built with Google’s Chromium engine.

The browser was initially exclusive to Mac, but when the first iPhone arrived in 2007, it also included Safari. The first version for Windows, Safari 3.0, was released that same year. However, the Windows version wasn’t all that great † The initial release included a security vulnerability for arbitrary code execution, which was patched less than 48 hours later as Safari 3.0.1.

Web browsers based on Chromium have the ability to make changes to the browser interface and engine, so Google doesn’t have complete control how they work. Each step away from Google’s upstream code makes adopting new changes to Chromium more time-consuming, though. That makes development more burdensome, and more crucially, it can lead to security patches in Chromium taking a long time to show up in some browsers. One example was Kiwi Browser for Android, which was stuck on Chrome 77 for over a year.

There are reasons beyond the health of the open web for Apple to port Safari to more platforms. There are millions of people that use an iPhone or iPad, but use Windows PCs instead of Mac computers. Keeping Safari exclusive to macOS might encourage some of those people to buy a Mac, but Safari on Windows (and other platforms) could also act as a loss leader that encourages future Apple hardware purchases — much like the original iTunes for Windows nearly two decades ago . This is also a strategy that worked for Google: Chromebook sales were helped by the popularity of the Chrome browser, which itself only made Chrome more popular.

Apple released the first version of the Safari web browser in January 2003, as part of Mac OS X 10.3 ‘Panther’, following the end of Microsoft’s five-year deal with Apple to keep Internet Explorer as the default web browser on Mac. Even though the web browser was new, the technology empowering it was not — Apple used the KHTML rendering engine as a starting point to create Safari’s WebKit engine.

Safari 3.0 Beta on Windows (Credit: Network Computing.com)

Despite the early security issues and questionable software architecture, Safari for Windows was a decent web browser. Apple advertised it was “up to twice as fast” as Internet Explorer 7, and up to 1.6x the performance of Mozilla Firefox 2 (both supposedly tested on an Intel Core 2 Duo system with Windows XP and 1GB of RAM).

There are reasons beyond the health of the open web for Apple to port Safari to more platforms. There are millions of people who use an iPhone or iPad, but use Windows PCs instead of Mac computers. Keeping Safari exclusive to macOS might encourage some of those people to buy a Mac, but Safari on Windows (and other platforms) could also act as a loss leader that encourages future Apple hardware purchases — much like the original iTunes for Windows nearly two decades ago . This is also a strategy that worked for Google: Chromebook sales were helped by the popularity of the Chrome browser, which itself only made Chrome more popular.

Christian Schaefer pointed out in the blog post last year that Apple still supports the WebKit engine on Windows, mostly for embedded applications and Microsoft’s Playright testing platform. Newer versions even dropped the iTunes-based monster of a compatibility layer, in favor of the cross-platform Cairo graphics library. However, these minimal builds of WebKit are only intended for site testing, and don’t have common browser features like sync, tabs, or extensions.

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Home of the WebKit project, the browser engine used by Safari, Mail, App Store and many other applications on macOS, iOS and Linux.

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Folders and files, repository files navigation.

WebKit is a cross-platform web browser engine. On iOS and macOS, it powers Safari, Mail, iBooks, and many other applications. For more information about WebKit, see the WebKit project website .

Trying the Latest

On macOS, download Safari Technology Preview to test the latest version of WebKit. On Linux, download Epiphany Technology Preview . On Windows, you'll have to build it yourself.

Reporting Bugs

• Search WebKit Bugzilla to see if there is an existing report for the bug you've encountered.
• Create a Bugzilla account to report bugs (and comment on them) if you haven't done so already.
• File a bug in accordance with our guidelines .

Once your bug is filed, you will receive email when it is updated at each stage in the bug life cycle . After the bug is considered fixed, you may be asked to download the latest nightly and confirm that the fix works for you.

Getting the Code

Run the following command to clone WebKit's Git repository:

Building WebKit

Building for apple platforms.

Install Xcode and its command line tools if you haven't done so already:

• Install Xcode Get Xcode from https://developer.apple.com/downloads . To build WebKit for OS X, Xcode 5.1.1 or later is required. To build WebKit for iOS Simulator, Xcode 7 or later is required.
• Install the Xcode Command Line Tools In Terminal, run the command: xcode-select --install

Run the following command to build a macOS debug build with debugging symbols and assertions:

For performance testing, and other purposes, use --release instead.

Embedded Builds

To build for an embedded platform like iOS, tvOS, or watchOS, pass a platform argument to build-webkit .

For example, to build a debug build with debugging symbols and assertions for embedded simulators:

or embedded devices:

where platform is ios , tvos or watchos .

Using Xcode

You can open WebKit.xcworkspace to build and debug WebKit within Xcode. Select the "Everything up to WebKit + Tools" scheme to build the entire project.

If you don't use a custom build location in Xcode preferences, you have to update the workspace settings to use WebKitBuild directory. In menu bar, choose File > Workspace Settings, then click the Advanced button, select "Custom", "Relative to Workspace", and enter WebKitBuild for both Products and Intermediates.

Building the GTK Port

For production builds:

For development builds:

For more information on building WebKitGTK, see the wiki page .

Building the WPE Port

Building windows port.

For building WebKit on Windows, see the WebKit on Windows page .

Running WebKit

With safari and other macos applications.

Run the following command to launch Safari with your local build of WebKit:

The run-safari script sets the DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH environment variable to point to your build products, and then launches /Applications/Safari.app . DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH tells the system loader to prefer your build products over the frameworks installed in /System/Library/Frameworks .

To run other applications with your local build of WebKit, run the following command:

iOS Simulator

Run the following command to launch iOS simulator with your local build of WebKit:

In both cases, if you have built release builds instead, use --release instead of --debug .

Linux Ports

If you have a development build, you can use the run-minibrowser script, e.g.:

Pass one of --gtk , --jsc-only , or --wpe to indicate the port to use.

Congratulations! You’re up and running. Now you can begin coding in WebKit and contribute your fixes and new features to the project. For details on submitting your code to the project, read Contributing Code .

Contributors 994

Debugging Safari-specific bugs in Windows via WSL2

Table of contents.

If you want to debug your website in safari from Windows without any emulator involved, you are lucky! This guide explains how to get a fully featured WebKit browser running natively in Windows 10 and Windows 11 :)

What to expect from this post

At the end of this short guide you will have a free, non-emulated local browser that runs and behaves almost the same as safari desktop.

We will be installing epiphany , a Linux-only browser that is based on WebKit. All of this is possible thanks to WSL2, available in Win10 and Win11.

Install WSL2

Please follow the official Microsoft instructions on how to install WSL2 and make sure you are using WSL version 2:

Install and Upgrade Ubuntu

Head to the Microsoft Store (disconnect from VPNs as it can cause issues) and install Ubuntu 20.04 .

Run ubuntu for the first time and upgrade all the packages:

Install a WebKit based browser (Epiphany)

Run the following commands to get epiphany-browser installed:

Open Epiphany browser

If you are on a recent Win10 or Win11, you should be ready to go.

Execute epiphany and check if everything works:

If it opens, you’re done! Enjoy :)

If it doesn’t and you see the following error, continue with the next steps.

If you are on Windows 11 and it didn’t work, it should. Please update your GPU drivers and try again, you don’t need the extra steps.

Installing an X Server for Windows

There are a few free and opensource X Servers for windows, but XMing is the one that worked better for me.

Start by downloading and installing it from this link .

Keep all the default configurations when installing.

Once its done, you will see a new program called XLaunch. Open it and enable all traffic through the firewall (public and private) .

• Select Multiple windows and set Display number to 0
• Start no client
• Check both Clipboard and No Access Control
• (Optional) Save your config to a file

The X Server is running now, you can see it in the system tray.

Connecting WSL2 to XMing

Linux GUI applications depend on the DISPLAY environment variable to know where to send the data.

Open Ubuntu terminal and run the following command to assign the proper variable:

Optionally, add these lines to your .bashrc file so they run automatically on startup.

You can read more about this step here

Open Epiphany browser (again)

This time it should all work. From your Ubuntu terminal run:

As promised, enjoy :)

If it gets stuck when opening, check your firewall rules. XMing should have inbound rules for all networks enabled (both public and private)

C++/.NET Software Architect

After the successful “hello XLNT” example, it was time to...

Running WebKit on Windows

Jul 5, 2019

Updated: 2022-11-10

I’m working on WebKit on Windows these days. Sometimes I see someone asking about WebKit for Windows. I would summarize the current situation.

AppleWin port

AppleWin port is an upstream port that is used for iTunes for Windows. It uses the same components with Mac port, i.e. Core Graphics and Core Foundation, etc.

It supports only WebKit1. They removed AppleWin WebKit2 . And, WebKit thread is not separated from UI thread. The browser becomes unresponsive while running JavaScript benchmarks.

AppleWin port is supporting both 32bit and 64bit versions because iTunes for Windows is supporting them. However, the 32bit version of Windows JavaScriptCore is supporting only Low-Level Interpreter C Loop, not supporting JIT. LLInt CLoop has the high stack consumption issue for MSVC .

The latest 64bit built binary can be downloaded from Buildbot. You need to install iTunes on your PC by using an MSI installer. You can’t use the Microsoft Store version of iTunes.

• https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/win64
• How to run the latest WebKit ( Safari ) on Windows

AppleWin has disabled WebInspectorUI as default. WebInspector can’t be used with the binaries.

You can compile out both 32bit and 64bit AppleWin port by yourself. However, the required library WebKitSupportLibrary.zip is not redistributable .

WinCairo port

WinCairo port is a redistributable upstream Windows port. It supports both WebKit1 and WebKit2, but it plans to remove WebKit1 .

It supports only 64bit. Its JavaScriptCore supports LLInt Asm, baseline JIT, and DFG JIT, but neither FTL JIT nor Web Assembly.

The latest built binary can be downloaded from Buildbot.

• Download build artifacts from Buildbot

Latest #WebKit MiniBrowser for Windows based on WinCairo 64 https://t.co/SpdGSAsvW3 : Todo: `Download build artifacts from Buildbot` . ~ 125mb I'd like to embed this as WKwebView in Java .. but I can't. pic.twitter.com/uCBnngXPK9 — Friedhold Matz (@FriedholdMatz) June 24, 2020

Microsoft Playwright is distributing WinCairo port WebKit with some modifications.

Playwright (WebKit on Windows) pic.twitter.com/PCluWMkI2s — Fujii Hironori (藤井宏憲) (@fujii0) June 17, 2020

Here is the list of Microsoft Playwright modifications to WinCairo as far as I know.

• Disables high DPI support
• Disables GPU process mode
• Uses the complex text code path always
• Added a option to disable accelerated compositing (–disable-accelerated-compositing)
• Hides the native scroll bars

If you have installed npm , you can run Playwright by the following command.

QtWebKit a downstream port that supports WebKit1 and WebKit2.

In WebKit1, WebKit thread and UI thread are separated. It seems that Accelerated Compositing doesn’t work on Windows.

• Otter Browser

WebKitGTK is a well maintained upstream port but doesn’t support Windows. WebKitGTK is distributing prebuilt MiniBrowser bundles. You need WSL and X11 server (VcXsrv or Cygwin/X) to run them.

• https://webkitgtk.org/built-products/x86_64/release/
• Bug 215266 – [GTK][WPE] Add a script for generating MiniBrowser bundles

WPE WebKit is a well maintained upstream port but doesn’t support Windows. WPE is distributing prebuilt MiniBrowser bundles. It needs Wayland server on Windows. But, I haven’t tried yet.

• https://wpewebkit.org/built-products/x86_64/release/

JavaFX WebKit

Arunprasad Rajkumar is working on it in June 2019 . But I don’t know.

Blazing fast. Incredibly private.

Safari is the best way to experience the internet on all your Apple devices. It brings robust customization options, powerful privacy protections, and optimizes battery life — so you can browse how you like, when you like. And when it comes to speed, it’s the world’s fastest browser. 1

Performance

More with the battery. less with the loading..

With a blazing-fast JavaScript engine, Safari is the world’s fastest browser. 1 It’s developed to run specifically on Apple devices, so it’s geared to make the most out of your battery life and deliver long-lasting power.

Increased performance

We’re always working to make the fastest desktop browser on the planet even faster.

Improved power efficiency

Safari lets you do more online on a single charge.

Up to 4 hours more streaming videos compared with Chrome 3

Up to 17 hours of video streaming 3

Best-in-class browsing

Safari outperforms both Mac and PC browsers in benchmark after benchmark on the same Mac. 4

• JetStream /
• MotionMark /
• Speedometer /

JavaScript performance on advanced web applications. 4

Safari vs. other Mac browsers

Safari on macOS

Chrome on macOS

Edge on macOS

Firefox on macOS

Safari vs. Windows 11 browsers

Chrome on Windows 11

Edge on Windows 11

Firefox on Windows 11

Rendering performance of animated content. 4

Web application responsiveness. 4

4K video streaming

See your favorite shows and films in their best light. Safari supports in-browser 4K HDR video playback for YouTube, Netflix, and Apple TV+. 5 And it runs efficiently for longer-lasting battery life.

Privacy is built in.

Online privacy isn’t just something you should hope for — it’s something you should expect. That’s why Safari comes with industry-leading privacy protection technology built in, including Intelligent Tracking Prevention that identifies trackers and helps prevent them from profiling or following you across the web. Upgrading to iCloud+ gives you even more privacy protections, including the ability to sign up for websites and services without having to share your personal email address.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention

Safari stops trackers in their tracks.

What you browse is no one’s business but your own. Safari has built‑in protections to help stop websites and data-collection companies from watching and profiling you based on your browsing activity. Intelligent Tracking Prevention uses on‑device intelligence to help prevent cross‑site tracking and stops known trackers from using your IP address — making it incredibly difficult to learn who you are and what you’re interested in.

Privacy Report

Safari makes it simple to see how your privacy is protected on all the websites you visit. Click Privacy Report in the Safari menu for a snapshot of cross-site trackers currently prevented from profiling you on the website you’re visiting. Or view a weekly Privacy Report to see how Safari protects you as you browse over time.

Customization

Putting the you in url..

Safari is more customizable than ever. Organize your tabs into Tab Groups so it’s easy to go from one interest to the next. Set a custom background image and fine-tune your browser window with your favorite features — like Reading List, Favorites, iCloud Tabs, and Siri Suggestions. And third-party extensions for iPhone, iPad, and Mac let you do even more with Safari, so you can browse the way you want across all your devices.

Safari Profiles allow you to separate your history, extensions, Tab Groups, favorites, cookies, and more. Quickly switch between profiles for topics you create, like Personal and Work.

Web apps let you save your favorite websites to the Dock on Mac and to the Home Screen on iPhone and iPad. A simplified toolbar and separate settings give you an app-like experience.

Safari Extensions add functionality to your browser to help you explore the web the way you want. Find and add your favorite extensions in the dedicated Safari category on the App Store.

Save and organize your tabs in the way that works best for you. Name your Tab Groups, edit them, and switch among them across devices. You can also share Tab Groups — making planning your next family trip or group project easier and more collaborative.

Smart Tools

Designed to help your work flow..

Built-in tools create a browsing experience that’s far more immersive, intuitive, and immediate. Get detailed information about a subject in a photo with just a click, select text within any image, instantly translate an entire web page, and quickly take notes wherever you are on a site — without having to switch apps.

Notes is your go-to app to capture any thought. And with the Quick Note feature, you can instantly jot down ideas as you browse websites without having to leave Safari.

Translation

Translate entire web pages with a single click. You can also get translations for text in images and paused video without leaving Safari.

Interact with text in any image or paused video on the web using functions like copy and paste, translate, and lookup. 6

Visual Look Up

Quickly learn more about landmarks, works of art, breeds of dogs, and more with only a photo or an image you find online. And easily lift the subject of an image from Safari, remove its background, and paste it into Messages, Notes, or other apps.

Surf safe and sound.

Strong security protections in Safari help keep you safe. Passkeys introduce a safer way to sign in. iCloud Keychain securely stores and autofills passkeys and passwords across all your devices. Safari also notifies you when it encounters suspicious websites and prevents them from loading. Because it loads each web page in a separate process, any harmful code is always confined to a single browser tab so it won’t crash the entire application or access your data. And Safari automatically upgrades sites from HTTP to the more secure HTTPS when available.

Passkeys introduce a more secure and easier way to sign in. No passwords required.

Passkeys are end-to-end encrypted and safe from phishing and data leaks, and they are stronger than all common two-factor authentication types. Thanks to iCloud Keychain, they work across all your Apple devices, and they even work on non-Apple devices.

Learn more about passkeys

Apple Pay and Wallet make checkout as easy as lifting a finger.

Apple Pay is the easiest and most secure way to shop on Safari — allowing you to complete transactions with Face ID or Touch ID on your iPhone or iPad, with Touch ID on your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, or by double-clicking the side button on your Apple Watch.

Learn more about Apple Pay

With AutoFill, you can easily fill in your previously saved credit card information from the Wallet app during checkout. Your credit card details are never shared, and your transactions are protected with industry-leading security.

Same Safari. Different device.

Safari works seamlessly and syncs your passwords, bookmarks, history, tabs, and more across Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. And when your Mac, iOS, or iPadOS devices are near each other, they can automatically pass what you’re doing in Safari from one device to another using Handoff. You can even copy images, video, or text from Safari on your iPhone or iPad, then paste into another app on your nearby Mac — or vice versa.

When you use Safari on multiple devices, your tabs carry over from one Apple device to another. So you can search, shop, work, or browse on your iPhone, then switch to your iPad or Mac and pick up right where you left off.

Save web pages you want to read later by adding them to your Reading List. Then view them on any of your iCloud-connected devices — even if you’re not connected to the internet.

iCloud Keychain securely stores your user names, passkeys, passwords, and credit card numbers and keeps them up to date on your trusted devices. So you can easily sign in to your favorite websites — as well as apps on iOS and iPadOS — and quickly make online purchases.

Designed for developers.

Deep WebKit integration between Mac hardware and macOS allows Safari to deliver the fastest performance and the longest battery life of any browser on the platform, while supporting modern web standards for rich experiences in the browser. WebKit in macOS Sonoma includes optimizations that enable even richer browsing experiences, and give developers more control over styling and layout — allowing for more engaging content.

Make Safari your default browser

Customize your start page, view your browsing privacy report, monitor your saved passwords, use apple pay in safari, view your tabs across all your devices, read the safari user guide, get safari support.

View in English

Safari Technology Preview

Safari is the best way to experience the internet on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Safari Technology Preview gives you an early look at upcoming web technologies on Apple platforms. Get the latest layout technologies, visual effects, developer tools, and more, so you can provide input on how they are implemented and deliver best-in-class experiences on Apple devices.

Download Safari Technology Preview

Preview the latest web technologies. Get a preview of the latest advances in Safari web technologies, including HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Safari Technology Preview includes the most recent version of WebKit, the rendering engine that powers Safari.

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How-To Geek

I tried browsing the web with safari 1.0, here's how it went.

Hands-on with Apple's first web browser.

Key Takeaways

• Safari 1.0 was released in 2003 to replace Internet Explorer on the Mac.
• It was lacking some features compared to other web browsers, but it was fast and minimalist.
• Safari 1.0 is not compatible with most modern websites.

Safari was introduced in 2003 as Apple's replacement for Internet Explorer on the Mac, and it has continued to evolve since then as the default browser on all Apple devices. Let's take a deep dive into the browser that started it all: Safari 1.0.

The first version of Safari was released on June 23rd, 2003 , following a public beta that reached nearly five million downloads. The initial version was an optional download for Macs running Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar , and it was later bundled with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther . Apple continued shipping Safari with every new Mac operating system, continuing to the present day with new releases of macOS.

Hello, Safari

Safari is a core system application on Mac computers, so you can't (easily) use older versions on newer operating systems that have a newer Safari version already installed. In the name of science, I fired up my trusty 1999 PowerMac G3, created a new drive partition, and installed a fresh copy of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. That release shipped with Safari version 1.1, so this isn't technically the first public version, but it's close enough.

Safari 1.0 is a far cry from modern versions of Apple's web browser, but there are some familiar interface elements. The top bar has the back, forward, reload, and bookmark buttons that are still present in today's web browsers, but the address bar and web search are two separate text fields.

Google Chrome helped popularize the idea of a combined address and search bar when it was released in 2009, but before that, most web browsers had the same split text fields. On that note, Google is the default search engine, and I didn't see an option anywhere to change it.

Safari 1.0 isn't just minimalist by today's standards. This new Mac OS X installation also came with Internet Explorer 5 for Mac, which has a much more cluttered design with a sidebar, status bar, and more buttons at the top of the window. You could click a button on the sidebar to hide most of that for distraction-free browsing, but Safari is less complicated out of the box.

Most of the other browsers from this time, like Opera, Netscape, and the Mozilla Application Suite, were similarly feature-packed. The first version of Firefox arrived in 2004, the year after Safari, with a simplified feature set and a focus on web browsing. There is support for tabbed browsing in Safari 1.0, but it's not enabled by default.

There's also a bookmarks manager for organizing your favorite sites and pages, accessible from the menu bar or the bookmarks button in the bookmarks bar. The default bookmarks are a fun look back at the early-2000s internet, with links to Amazon, PayPal, BBC News, MapQuest, Monster.com, and other sites.

The preferences panel has some options for how windows open, where to save files and pages, turning on tabbed browsing, managing plugins, and deleting browsing cookies. There's also an AutoFill feature that can fill in web forms with information from your Address Book.

I also noticed this early version of Safari doesn't have an Inspect Element option, or seemingly any other web development features. You can view the HTML source code for a page, but that's it.

Surf Like It's 2003

So, what can you actually do with Safari 1.0 in 2024? Well, not a lot. This is a twenty-year-old web rendering engine, with no support for modern HTML and CSS layout features, HTML5 video, or most JavaScript features. Every site that loads over HTTPS (SSL) shows security warnings or refuses to load at all.

The main Google home page works, but the search results use a broken mobile layout. CNN, Apple.com, Wikipedia, eBay, and BBC News don't load at all. Amazon made the browser freeze for about a minute, complete with the spinning beachball of death, then loaded a page with just text and no styling or images.

There are a few websites designed specifically for older browsers, though. The FrogFind search engine created by Action Retro on YouTube works well here, which downgrades modern sites to simpler text-based layouts.

FrogFind doesn’t always work well, but it does turn websites like Wikipedia from completely unusable to readable.

Looking Back at Tomorrow

You can’t use Safari 1.0 for typical web browsing anymore, but it’s still a fascinating look at Apple’s vision for the future of web browsing. It wasn’t a feature-packed internet suite, like Netscape and Mozilla, or a super-customizable application like Opera. It was a fast, simple, and focused web browser, built on top of the modern KHTML engine from KDE’s Konqueror project.

Even though Safari wasn’t a perfect experience in its early days, the response from Mac owners was generally positive. Macworld said in 2003 , “Safari loaded pages faster than Internet Explorer in four out of five tests — in some cases, almost twice as fast.” The review from CNET for the 1.0 release said, “We encountered only minor bugs, usually related to JavaScript errors, though less so than the beta versions. Overall, Safari performed well.”

Safari went on to serve as the default browser for the iPhone and iPad, and there was a short-lived Windows version starting in 2007 . Safari’s underlying WebKit engine has also helped shape the internet we know today. WebKit was used by Google Chrome for years until Google forked it to create the Blink engine , which is now used by Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Vivaldi, and other web browsers.

For now, though, I’m happy to get back to a functioning modern web browser.

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Context Navigation

Webkit2 - high level document.

WebKit2 is a new API layer for WebKit designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process from the application UI. This model is very similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients of WebKit to use it.

Why is it named WebKit2?

The somewhat pedestrian reason is that it's an incompatible API change from the original WebKit, so it will probably be installed as something like /System/Library/WebKit2.framework on Mac.

WebKit2 provides a set of stable C-based functions that are mostly platform agnostic. Each port of WebKit is free to expose these functions as supported API, but they may chose not to. The macOS / iOS ports do not expose these functions as API, but instead treat them as SPI.

In order to achieve the goal of a non-blocking API, several techniques are used to make the API usable while still providing a comprehensive set of features to the embedder. These techniques include:

• Notification style client callbacks (e.g. didFinishLoadForFrame) These inform the embedder that something has happened, but do not give them the chance to do anything about it.
• Policy style clients callbacks (e.g. decidePolicyForNavigationAction) These allow the embedder to decide on an action at their leisure, notifying the page through a listener object.
• Policy settings (e.g. WKContextSetCacheModel, WKContextSetPopupPolicy) These allow the embedder to opt into a predefined policy without any callbacks into the UIProcess. These can either be an enumerated set of specific policies, or something more fine-grained, such as a list of strings with wildcards.
• Injected code (e.g. WebBundle) Code can be loaded into the WebProcess for cases where all the other options fail. This can useful when access to the DOM is required. [Planned, but not currently implemented]

The major API classes are:

WKContextRef

• Encapsulates all pages related to specific use of WebKit. All pages in this context share the same visited link set, local storage set, and preferences.

WKPageNamespaceRef

• Encapsulates all pages that can script each other.
• Basic unit of browsing. Stays the same as the main frame changes.

WKView[Ref]

• Native view that hooks into the platform's toolkit. On Windows, this wraps a HWND. On the Mac, it inherits from NSView.

Note that the requirement to be fully non-blocking requires an incompatible API break - many features of most existing WebKit APIs cannot be fulfilled in a non-blocking manner. Since we needed the API break anyway, we also took advantage of the opportunity to clean up and simplify the API.

Port-Specific APIs

The Mac port provides a fully non-blocking Objective-C API as a wrapper on top of the C API. The GTK+ port provides also a stable and non-blocking API: ​ http://webkitgtk.org/reference/webkit2gtk/stable/index.html

We believe a similar approach may be viable for other ports. We are also not removing or obsoleting any of the existing port-specific APIs. WebCore will remain as-is, and all current APIs will continue to work and be fully supported. Thus, WebKit development and existing ports of WebKit will not be disrupted.

Process Architecture

WebKit2 changes the WebKit stack to build a process management mechanism inside the WebKit API layer.

Here is what the architecture of a traditional WebKit port looks like:

Everything is in one process, and there is an API boundary between the application and the WebKit API. This is a simple model, and typically it's pretty easy for applications to reuse the WebKit API.

Here is what we are going for with WebKit2:

Notice that there is now a process boundary, and it sits *below* the API boundary. Part of WebKit operates in the UI process, where the application logic also lives. The rest of WebKit, along with WebCore and the JS engine, lives in the web process. The web process is isolated from the UI process. This can deliver benefits in responsiveness, robustness, security (through the potential to sandbox the web process) and better use of multicore CPUs. There is a straightforward API that takes care of all the process management details for you.

How is This Different from Chromium WebKit?

Chromium takes a different approach to multiprocess:

Notice that in this case, the the process boundary is *above* the API boundary. Chromium WebKit does not directly provide a multiprocess framework, rather, it is optimized for use as a component of a multiprocess application, which does all the proxying and process management itself. The Chrome team at Google did a great job at trailblazing multiprocess browsing with Chrome. But it's difficult to reuse their work, because the critical logic for process management, proxying between processes and sandboxing is all part of the Chrome application, rather than part of the API layer. So if another WebKit-based application or another port wanted to do multiprocess based on Chromium WebKit, it would be necessary to reinvent or cut & paste a great deal of code.

That was an understandable choice for Google - Chrome was developed as a secret project for many years, and is deeply invested in this approach. Also, there are not any other significant API clients. There is Google Chrome, and then there is the closely related Chrome Frame.

WebKit2 has a different goal - we want process management to be part of what is provided by WebKit itself, so that it is easy for any application to use. We would like chat clients, mail clients, twitter clients, and all the creative applications that people build with WebKit to be able to take advantage of this technology. We believe this is fundamentally part of what a web content engine should provide.

There are two key subsystems that support the process division :

• CoreIPC - an abstraction for general message passing, including event handling. The current implementations use mach messages on Mac OS X, and named pipes on Windows.
• DrawingArea - an abstraction for a cross-process drawing area. Multiple drawing strategies are possible, the simplest is just a shared memory bitmap.

There are two other important abstractions, which may be pushed down to WebCore or WTF over time:

• Work Queues

Current Status

WebKit2 is production ready and stable. Different browsers are already using it like GNOME's Epiphany.

How to try it Out

build-webkit on Mac OS X or Windows now builds WebKit2 by default. WebKit2 will not work with the shipping version of Safari. Because WebKit2 is an incompatible API break, it requires a custom testbed to run it. A basic web browser application suitable for testing WebKit2 is available in Tools/MiniBrowser.

How to run layout tests

You can run layout tests in WebKit2 by passing "-2" (or "--webkit-test-runner") to run-webkit-tests, like:

run-webkit-tests --debug -2

Many tests are skipped for WebKit2 (via the LayoutTests/platform/mac-wk2/Skipped file), but that number is decreasing as DumpRenderTree API is implemented for WebKitTestRunner.

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• chromium-webkit-stack.png ​ ( 62.0 KB ) - added by [email protected] 14 years ago .

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Windows で Safari のブラウザテストをする

• 公開日 2022 年 10 月 28 日

Akira Web クリエイター

Playwright を使用

Windows でも Safari のブラウザテストができます。正確には、WebKit ブラウザでサイトを開けます。

使用するのは、Microsoft が開発している Playwright です。

Playwright は、主に E2E テストの自動化などで使用します。ただ、OS に関係なく Chromium、Firefox、WebKit のブラウザでサイトを開くこともできます。

この記事は Test Your Site In Every Browser を参考にし、試したことを書いています。詳しい説明は、元記事をご覧ください。YouTube での解説もあります。

また、説明が分かりやすい他の動画もあります。

Windows で Safari のブラウザテストを開始するまで、全部で 6 ステップあります。早ければ 2 ~ 3 分で終わります。

2 回目以降は、6 ステップ目だけでテストができます。

ステップ 1 : Node.js のインストール

Playwright を npm でインストールするため、予め Node.js をインストールしておきます。

執筆時点での Playwright に必要な Node.js のバージョンは 14 以上です。

参考： playwright/package.json

ステップ 2 : フォルダの作成

どこでもいいのでパソコンにフォルダを 1 つ作ります。

今後 Safari でテストをしたい時は、このフォルダを使うことになります。頻繁に使用する場合は、デスクトップにでも作れば便利かもしれません。

フォルダ名は、分かりやすいように browser-test としておきます。

ステップ 3 : Playwright のインストール

作成した browser-test フォルダに Playwright をインストールします。

PowerShell またはコマンドプロンプトを開き、browser-test フォルダまで移動します。

browser-test フォルダの上で右クリックをし、「ターミナルを開く」をクリックしても構いません。フォルダに移動した状態で PowerShell かコマンドプロンプトを開けます。

フォルダまで移動したら、まずは初期化します。

そして、Playwright をインストールします。

さらに、ブラウザをインストールします。デフォルトでは、Chromium、Firefox、WebKit がインストールされます。

尚、インストールされるブラウザのバージョンは、 Releases をご覧ください。執筆時点での最新版では、WebKit 16.0 をインストールできます。また、特定のブラウザのみのインストールもできます。詳しくは、 Install browsers をご参考ください。

ステップ 4 : package.json の変更

browser-test フォルダに package.json ができているはずです。

package.json の scripts を変更します。

scripts 以外は変更の必要はありません。

ステップ 5 : テストの作成

次に、Playwright のテストを作成します。

browser-test フォルダに browser.test.ts ファイルを作成し、以下を追加します。

起動ページは、公開済みのサイトでも構いません。

また、 page.goto を削除した場合、about:blank でブラウザが開きます。不特定のサイトをテストしたい場合は、削除するのがいいかもしれません。

これでセットアップは終わりです。

ステップ 6 : 実行

テストを実行します。ローカルで開発中のサイトをテストする場合は、そのサイトのサーバーを事前にローカルに立てておきます。

Safari でテストをしたい場合は、ターミナルに以下のコマンドを打ちます。

すると、WebKit ブラウザが立ち上がり、browser.test.ts で指定した起動ページが表示されます。アドレスバーもあります。

尚、Playwright の Inspector も立ち上がりますが、今回は使いません。

メニューの Develop から Show Web Inspector をクリックするか、右クリックで表示される Inspector Element をクリックすれば、デベロッパーツールが開きます。

Safari などの WebKit ブラウザと本当に同じ表示なのかを <summary> で試してみます。 <summary> を display: block; とした場合、Chrome や Firefox では展開用の三角マークは非表示になります。一方、Safari では非表示になりません。

Chrome では、三角マークがありません。

本来の <summary> ではラベルの前に三角マークが表示されますが、なくなっています。

Playwright の WebKit ブラウザでは、三角マークがあります。Safari と同じ表示です。

Chrome とは違い、ラベルの前に三角マークがあります。 display: block; では非表示になっていません。

Safari で三角マークを非表示にするには、 summary::-webkit-details-marker を display: none; にしないといけないことがデベロッパーツールで分かります。

正真正銘の WebKit ブラウザが Windows で使えます。

使ってみてメリットに感じた点です。

• OS に関係なくクロスブラウザテストができる。
• 最新バージョンのブラウザでテストができる。
• インストールなどのセットアップが簡単。
• ローカルの開発環境がホットリロードに対応していれば、ホットリロードが効く。

一方、デメリットに感じた点です。ただ、大きな不満点はありませんでした。

• ほんの少し動作が重い。動きがスムーズでない時が、たまにある。
• 少し表示が粗い。私の環境が原因かもしれませんが、少しにじんで見える。
• メニューの File の New Window または Ctrl + N で新しい窓を開いた場合、最後に開いた窓を閉じると全ての窓が閉じる。
• Safari と WebKit が全く同じとは限らない。

CSS などの簡単な確認には、とても使えると思います。