Safari 14
Technically speaking, Apple’s newest version of Safari stands by itself, and can even be downloaded for older versions of macOS, although of course it’s the standard on Big Sur.
With Safari 14 on Big Sur, you not only gain better performance and better security, but if you’ve been envying the customizability that Chrome offers, you’ll be happy to know that you can now fully change up your start page layout, adding new sections you want to see while removing those that you don’t, and you can even add a custom background wallpaper.
The tab bar also gets a nice upgrade, allowing it to show a lot more tabs and letting you see what’s in them at a glance, both by providing more prominent favicons once they get too narrow to read, as well as getting a preview of a tab’s page simply by hovering your mouse pointer over it.
The App Store also now gains a dedicated category for Safari extensions, which will let you more easily find tools to enhance your browsing experience, and you can choose the websites where you want to use any given extension.
Safari on macOS also offers the same built-in translation features that came to iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 earlier this year, allowing you to instantly translate web pages between seven languages in a click without having to rely on Google Translate, plus a new Privacy Report feature will show you exactly what its Intelligent Tracking Prevention has been protecting you from.
Lastly, even though Safari was already the fastest and most power-efficient browser you could use on a Mac, Apple has taken that up an even bigger notch with more performance increases, boasting 1.5 hours more video streaming time and 50% faster website loading time compared to other Mac browsers like Chrome and Firefox.