I went back to Safari after I started to get annoyed with Zen on my Mac, and so far, it’s… fine.

Safari doesn’t have all the bells and whistles Orion has, especially the vertical tabs1, but it works. And here’s the thing: I’m always going to have Safari. It’s not like I’m going to uninstall Safari from my Mac if I’m satisfied with another browser, because it’s integrated into the OS in a way I shouldn’t mess with, probably similar to how Internet Explorer (and then Edge) is with Windows.

So if Safari doesn’t go anywhere, and sometimes, despite my best efforts, certain apps and links still open in Safari, I might as well use it. After all, it’s not as bad as Internet Explorer was.

Safari is pretty basic. It doesn’t have a lot of extensions compared to Chromium browsers and Firefox, that’s for sure, but for the most part, what I need is there2. It works smoothly and quickly without the kind of issues I’ve noticed in both Zen (syncing, lack of codecs) and Orion (broken sidebar, privacy settings that can prevent websites from working properly).

See, since I have two computers - my Mac and my Linux desktop - I’m not too worried about privacy or usability on Safari.

For Privacy, I have LibreWolf on Linux (which can no longer be installed without quarantine via Homebrew, prevents it from lunching), and for work productivity, I use Edge anyway, since we’re a Microsoft workplace. It’s Edge where I need some serious tab management, and it’s there where I have it.

Safari is my place for watching Netflix and YouTube, checking my bank statements, and running quick searches with Kagi. It’s fine for that.

On Linux, Zen has become my browser of choice for “normal” stuff almost since I installed it. It always opens to my latest pages, it occupies a whole virtual desktop there, which is how it’s meant to work, and for the most part, it delivers all that I need (I still need to switch to the Mac to watch something, but OK). With this arrangement, I think I’m good for now.

Footnotes

1 : Safari has vertical tabs… kind of. You can turn on the sidebar and see them, but then you have a sidebar just stuck there (can’t auto-hide it), and there’s not a lot of tab management you can do, especially when you compare it to Zen.

2: I’d like for KeePassXC to be working with Safari, but no such luck. I’ve seen some paid solutions, but they’re too expensive for my use case.