- Safari is getting some useful updates
- Vertical tabs will arrive for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, but it’s only in the dev betas for now
- Other features like Adaptive Dark Mode and Siri AI browser tools are coming, too, along with our first glimpse of the new Audio Intelligence capabilities
On the global web browser stage, Safari lags behind Chrome, but when it comes to Apple‘s 2.5 billion customers, it reigns supreme. Yet, even those devoted users might’ve noticed that their favorite browser was lacking at least one long-sought feature. Now, with the introduction of Dev Betas for iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, and macOS 27.3, they’re getting their wish.
In beta today, the platform upgrade actually brings a series of relatively small but important updates to Safari across the iPhone Duo, iPad, and Mac, but chief among them is vertical tabs.
As is often the case, Apple didn’t invent this idea. I started using vertical tabs in, of all things, Microsoft Edge years ago, and even Chrome recently added them. Now, with the Safari update, you can open the Safari View Menu or hop into Settings and select vertical tabs.
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By default, the tabs, which will live on the left side of your browser window in iPadOS and macOS (and iOS for the iPhone Duo), appear as icons — a space-saving measure. You can hover over any of them for a quick look at the hidden browser window.
There are other vertical tab features like the ability to pin tabs at the top of your list by dragging and dropping them, and tab groups. The tabs will work on the iPad and, yes, the new iPhone Duo in portrait and landscape mode.
The platform updates also bring a new kind of Dark Mode. Instead of only showing the mode on web pages that support it, Safari will offer to tune unsupported pages to Dark Mode too, but in a way, Apple promises, that won’t ruin the sites. The Adaptive Dark Mode will automatically darken light backgrounds, invert logos and graphics, recolor vector artwork, lift raised surfaces, and even detect shadows and adjust them. It will not touch already darkened sites. For developers, there are new tags they can use that will prevent Adaptive Dark Mode from adjusting them.
The update is also bringing some Siri AI browser tools to Safari for hardware that supports Apple Intelligence.
Siri AI already has, with your permission, an awareness of what’s on your screen, but with this update, it’ll see entire web pages (beyond what you see in the screen frame) and even hidden tabs.
This can be useful when you want to do wholesale organization and group tabs. Say you want all tabs relating to a trip to Malta sorted by activity, or you need all your car shopping tabs grouped and organized by car price.
Siri AI can, with new Custom Actions, do your bidding on the browser and clean up your history by topic, site, and time period. It might be useful when you don’t want someone seeing that you’ve been shopping for the last few days on a particular site for that coveted gift. There might be other reasons for targeted history scrubbing, but no need to get into that here.
Other notable updates arriving in iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3, watchOS 27.3 Dev Beta 1 include:
- Siri App Actions will let Siri AI dig even more deeply into your system by organizing files, making trip plans, creating playlists, scheduling group messages, and finding the best photos to share.
- The promised Apple Health app overhaul, which uses Apple Intelligence, will give you more insights from your health data.
- The pair of Audio Intelligence features that will work with your Apple Watch Series 12:
- Live rewind, for recalling what was said in conversation (you have to double-press the watch crown to read the last snippet of conversation). It might be a great tool for settling he said/he said arguments.
- Siri Recap, which, when enabled, can use Apple Intelligence to recap and summarize an entire talk, speech, lesson, or maybe a TED Talk.
The changes are coming to 27.3 betas first and will eventually roll out to the other platforms in a full release. For now, though, all of these updates are found only in the Dev Betas, which are typically the earliest and potentially buggiest releases before Apple moves on to Public Betas ( that anyone can install) and the final releases. There’s no word on when the full releases will arrive, and we would caution you against installing Developer betas on any of your everyday Apple devices.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
