In fact, there are all kinds of features Apple’s browser offers that you won’t find in Chrome—from copying text in images to hiding your IP address from trackers. Live Text is a macOS feature built into Safari that uses optical character recognition to identify text in images, allowing you to highlight and copy it. To use it, just open a photo on Safari and start selecting the text you see in it. It’s that easy. According to Apple, websites use Like and Share buttons, and other social widgets like comment fields, to track us even if we don’t use them. Safari automatically blocks this tracking, giving users more control over their data. You can get similar functionalities on Chrome by using add-ons, but in Safari it’s all built-in and enabled by default. From here you can set a universal rule for auto-playing audio, which can be Never Auto-Play. You can also configure exceptions for currently open sites. For example, you might want YouTube to be able to start playing videos immediately. A reader mode cleans the website you’re on, allowing you to concentrate on reading an article without the distraction of sidebars, pop-ups, ads, and other annoyances. They’re essential for browsing the modern web. Safari not only allows you to easily convert websites using reader mode, but it also allows you to open articles on a given website in reader mode by default. We can all think of a few websites that go way over the top when it comes to clutter—this is a way to avoid it entirely. To use it, go to View and Show Reader, or click on the Reader icon to the left of the address bar—it looks like a page. This is a Continuity feature for Apple devices and it notably works even if you’re using Chrome as your browser. But the integrations go deeper if you use Safari. For example, when you open a new tab you’ll see a list of currently open tabs on other devices, and your bookmarks and reading pages will all sync over without any effort on your end. Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that, since modern computers have more than enough power to run Chrome smoothly. But it can be more of an issue when your Mac is not plugged in. More system resources means more power usage, draining your battery faster. I’ve personally noticed I can get an extra couple hours out of my laptop by using Safari instead of Chrome, and I’m not the first person to notice this. Try it out for yourself.
