The latest, Preview 109, includes 'new Safari and WebKit features that will be present in Safari 14.' The developer preview can be run side-by-side with the stable, release-format Safari in macOS.
Apple on Thursday released Safari Technology Preview 109, the latest version of their developer preview web browser. The preview version of Apple’s popular browser offers developers and other interested users the ability to try out features that may or may not, debut in future public release versions of Safari.
The new Preview release is the first version built on the new Safari 14 update included in macOS Big Sur.
Safari Technology Preview Release 109 is now available for download for macOS Catalina. With this release, Safari Technology Preview is now available for betas of macOS Big Sur. If you already have Safari Technology Preview installed, you can update in the Software Update pane of System Preferences on macOS. Safari Technology Preview is currently only available for Intel-based Macs.
This release includes new Safari and WebKit features that will be present in Safari 14. The following Safari 14 features are new in Safari Technology Preview 109:
Safari Web Extensions. Extensions written for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge that use the WebExtension APIs can be converted to Safari Web Extensions using Xcode 12.
Privacy Report. See the trackers that Intelligent Tracking Prevention prevented from accessing identifying information.
Improved tab management with tab previews. Tabs feature a new space-efficient design that lets you view more tabs on-screen and preview tabs to find the one you’re looking for.
Website icons in tabs. Icons in tabs are turned on by default in Safari 14.
Password breach notifications. On macOS Big Sur, Safari will notify users when one of their saved passwords in iCloud Keychain has shown up in a data breach; requesting a password change uses the well-known URL for changing passwords (https://example.com/.well-known/change-password
), enabling websites to specify the page to open for updating a password.
Domain-bound codes. On macOS Big Sur, added support to Security Code AutoFill for domain-bound, one-time codes sent over SMS; in the following 2FA SMS, Safari only offers to fill the code on example.com, and no other domain.
Web Authentication. Added a Web Authentication platform authenticator using Touch ID, if that capability is present (macOS Big Sur-only). Added support for PIN entry and account selection on external FIDO2 security keys.
Adobe Flash is no longer supported in Safari.
In addition to these new Safari 14 features, this release covers WebKit revisions 262502-263214 and Password Manager Resources version 10e3fca9.
referrerpolicy
mutations to be considered “relevant mutations”dataTransfer.types
when handling the dragstart
eventalign-content
to apply for a single line::after
) in shadow roots to animateborder
propertiesfont-size
values with em
unitsDocument.currentScript
to work for SVGScriptElementsCache-Control: no-store
into the back-forward cacheJSON.stringify
to throw stack overflow errorRegExp.prototype
getters to throw on cross-realm accesssuper
to not depend on proto
return
completionserrors
an own property of AggregateError
instead of a prototype accessor<address>
element to no longer map to ARIA contentinfo
role-apple-pay-button-type
Automation.computeElementLayout
to return iframe-relative element rects when the coordinate system is “Page”The update can be downloaded from the Safari Technology Preview website, or if the browser is already installed, it can be updated via the “Update” tab in the Mac App Store. Full release notes for the update are also available on the Safari Technology Preview website.
While the preview is intended for use by developers and advanced users, in order to provide Apple with feedback on the development of the Safari browser, it can be run side-by-side with the release version of Safari. The app doesn’t require a developer account to download and install. For more information, visit the Safari Technology Preview website.
Starting today, there’s a new, convenient way to see what features and improvements are coming to Safari and other applications that use WebKit. Safari Technology Preview is a version of Safari for OS X, distributed by Apple, that includes a cutting-edge, in-development version of the WebKit browser engine. It’s a great way to test upcoming WebKit features and give feedback to the people building them when it’s most useful — early in development.
Safari Technology Preview is a standalone application that can be used side-by-side with Safari or other web browsers, making it easy to compare behaviors between them. Besides having the latest web features and bug fixes from WebKit, Safari Technology Preview includes the latest improvements to Web Inspector, which you can use to develop and debug your websites. Updates for Safari Technology Preview will be available every two weeks through the Updates pane of the Mac App Store.
You can download Safari Technology Preview from Apple’s Developer website. No account is required to download. You only need to install it once; afterward, updates will be delivered through the App Store.
Here are just a few areas of recent developments in WebKit that you can try in Safari Technology Preview today.
Safari Technology Preview supports ECMAScript 6, the latest iteration of the JavaScript programming language. ES6 has many new features, including classes; lexical scoping using let
, const
, and class
; iterators and generators; arrow functions; default parameters values; and many new built-in APIs.
B3 is a new low-latency, high-throughput compiler designed from the ground up to support JavaScript and other dynamic languages. B3 delivers great performance benefits, especially on systems with fewer CPU cores.
WebKit’s revamped IndexedDB implementation is more stable, more standards compliant, and still undergoing rapid improvement.
The latest version of Shadow DOM has been heavily revised based on input from web content authors and browser developers. WebKit is the first browser engine to implement this new version of the Shadow DOM spec.
It’s now possible to programmatically copy and cut text in response to a user gesture with document.execCommand('copy')
and document.execCommand('cut')
. Having this ability may eliminate some websites’ last need for the Flash plug-in.
You can define a policy for your web application to mitigate content injection vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS). Level 2 expands on Level 1 with support for <script>
and <style>
hashes, nonces, and new policy directives to control which websites can embed your web content.
You may already be familiar with the WebKit Nightly, which serves a purpose similar to that of Safari Technology Preview. For most people, we think Safari Technology Preview is a more convenient and stable way to live on recent WebKit changes. Unlike the nightlies, Safari Technology Preview supports the full set of iCloud-based Safari features, including iCloud History and iCloud Tabs. And we’ll use the time between Safari Technology Preview releases to curate and test updates to a point where we think developers will find it practical to use as their primary browser.
We want to hear your feedback about WebKit features before Safari ships them. Your requests and experiences help the WebKit project figure out what’s most important, and the stories of your successes or struggles with features help us refine our implementations. Hearing from the community earlier will give us more perspectives to consider, with more time to act on what we’ve learned.
You can file bugs or feature requests at the WebKit bug tracker, or you can submit feedback or bugs to Apple on Apple’s bug reporting website. For other questions or feedback, feel free to reach me on Twitter at @rmondello or Jonathan Davis at @jonathandavis.