
With it, you can collect tabs into as many groups as you like and switch among them. If you struggle under the cognitive load of dozens of unrelated tabs, the new Tab Groups feature might help. You can also bring up the option to close all open tabs by pressing and holding Done at the lower right corner of the screen. You can drag the tab thumbnails around to organize them and remove them by tapping an X button (weirdly located in the upper-right corner) or swiping them left off-screen.
#Safari technology preview tab groups mac#
In Safari in iOS 15, Apple took a cue from the iPad and Mac versions of the app and moved to a grid interface for the tab switcher (below right). In iOS 14 and earlier, Safari used a card stack metaphor for its tab switcher (below left), which could make it hard to see what each tab contained. You can even navigate directly to a site by speaking its URL, like “apple dot com.” Sadly, Apple didn’t extend this feature to the Mac version of Safari 15. As soon as you stop, Safari performs the search. Tap the current tab to display the address field, tap the microphone button, and speak instead of typing.

To revert to something closer to the old look, in Safari > Preferences > Tabs, select Separate for the tab layout (below bottom), and disable Show Color in Tab Bar to keep the controls gray regardless of the site color.įor many searches, it’s easier to speak than type, and Apple has made doing that even faster with Voice Search on the iPhone and iPad. Once again, the colorized tab bar can be glaring. But the way the Compact layout embeds the address field inside a tab and reduces the number of buttons you can see may perturb you (below top). Mac: Laptop screens aren’t huge, and Safari doesn’t minimize its tab bar when you scroll, as it does on the iPhone and iPad, so saving some vertical space might be welcome on a smaller screen.In Settings > Safari, you can choose between Compact Tab Bar (below top) and Separate Tab Bar (below bottom) either way, consider disabling Show Color in Tab Bar. And the colorized tab bar can be shockingly bright. However, since the tab bar automatically minimizes when you scroll down a page, reducing its size when it’s visible isn’t as much of a win as it might seem. iPad: Displays on the iPad are relatively small, so saving some vertical space with the new Compact Tab Bar could be helpful.Turn off Allow Website Tinting (also below right) if you don’t like the colorizing. This is a huge change from the controls appearing at the top, so if you don’t like it, go to Settings > Safari and switch from Tab Bar (below left) to Single Tab (below right).

Plus, the status bar area at the top of the screen takes on the color from the current site, which isn’t necessarily a visual win. iPhone: Apple combined the address bar and tab bar into a single set of controls at the bottom of the screen, where they’re easier to reach with your thumb while working one-handed and where you can swipe left and right to switch tabs.How that plays out varies between the iPhone, iPad, and Mac:

Early betas were met with a litany of complaints from testers, and Apple pulled back in the eventual releases, offering settings that let you retain the old interface. So, assuming you have Safari 15 on at least some of your devices, what’s new, and is it any good? New Tab Bar Interfaceįor Safari 15, Apple tried to minimize the tab bar interface to occupy less screen real estate and stand out less from the content of Web pages by co-opting the color of each page. Why do this before macOS 12 Monterey ships? Some of the browser’s new capabilities-notably the Tab Groups feature-integrate it more deeply into your Apple device experience by syncing across devices. Along with a new version of Safari in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, Apple has released Safari 15 for macOS 11 Big Sur and macOS 10.15 Catalina.
