Safari vs Shift Browser

Safari is Apple's web browser for that comes out-of-the-box for anyone who uses a MacBook or iPhone.

With Safari, you're not going to get anything too cutting-edge or innovative, because they, like Google Chrome are focused on stability for their 1+ billion users.

Since Apple is a hardware company at the end of the day, the whole point of Safari is that you're going to get a great cohesive experience if you're using all Apple products (Mac + iPad + iPhone).

The largest benefit to be had here, in our eyes, comes from Apple owning both the hardware and software layers. This allows them to go above and beyond with optimizations like battery life and cross-device syncing.

While they have baked in password management

We don't really see much major innovation or differentiation coming to Safari though. Why? Because this isn't Apple's core business. Not only that, but Apple has zero interest in going after the B2B and collaborative browser space. When comparing Arc Browser vs Safari, you'll see first-hand that Arc has a lot more going on in the features and differentiation space as they ultimately want to be the browser for teams and collaboration.

We do applaud Apple for adding tab groups, and allowing for them to be on the side of the browser window. There's some small similarities when comparing Safari or Brave in the recently released sidebar tab management in Brave and Arc Browser.

With Safari, you get a familiar and safe UI. It looks like a browser, it looks pretty much the same as it has the past decade, and it's relatively bland in terms of how it looks.

Safari User Interface

There's just not much to mention here, but the truth of the matter is some of this is by design. Their focus is to be stable, functional, and to let the content of the website you're currently on, shine.

This is where we can give Apple some props on the user-experience, if of course you're also using other Apple products. Take for example you visit a website on your iPhone, you get a prompt in your MacOS dock that shows a website was just opened on mobile. Want to open it up on your desktop? Simply click the Safari icon in your software dock.

In actually using the browser though, there's nothing in particular that stands out as an exceptional UX. This category in particular is where Arc shines. They have the smallest UX details, that just makes using the browser on the day-to-day so incredibly enjoyable.

Are you a huge Apple fan? Do you only care about getting the best possible battery performance on your MacBook and nothing else matters to you? Do you absolutely despise change? If so, Safari is probably fine for you.

If you're on the other hand sort of bored when looking at the existing browser market and wish you could get a bit more enjoyment and productivity out of your browser, then that's where you should definitely be giving Arc a shot.

Genuinely, give Arc a shot for a week straight as your daily driver, and I'm willing to bet you that you never come back to Safari again.

Arc Browser is genuinely what Apple could have made, had they re-thought the browser from the ground up, without all the baggage that currently exists with Safari. And for that reason, that's why we rank Arc at the top of our best browsers list. Genuinely wouldn't be surprised if Apple one day acquired Arc and replaced it with Safari as the default browser for MacOS.

Shift is a tool that I've tried incredibly hard to like over the past 7+ years. The day I first found it, I was so stoked with it, until learning that it didn't have all of the Chromium extension support.

They've since made major strides on that front and have most extensions now supported, but it's beginning to feel a bit like a relic from the past, and pales in comparison to that of the more recent entrants into the space like Arc Browser and SigmaOS. In-fact, comparing Shift alongside Sidekick Browser and you'll be sure to confuse them with one another.

I just have a tough time recommending them at this point, they really just allow for your favorite apps to be pinned on the sidebar and easy account switching with some quick action features.

They'd like to focus on the productivity users, but we feel like you can get most of the positives of Shift in your existing browser by utilizing a tool like Workona or Toby.

If you're unwilling to install a new browser, stopping to use your beloved Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, well, you'd be hard-pressed to even give this browser a shot. We just don't feel like it innovates enough to actually take over your primary browser replacement, especially when looking at Shift vs Arc Browser for example.