I am here to announce that Safari 7, released in 2013, is officially the best web browser in the world. Yes, in 2026.
Don't believe me? Well, let's see how it compares to the latest version of Google Chrome, the most widely used web browser as of this writing. (It's more widely used because folks haven't heard the news about Safari 7 yet.)
- | Safari 7 | Google Chrome 158 |
|---|---|---|
| Works With Modern Websites | ✅ | ✅ |
| Runs on Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks (the world's best operating system) | ✅ | ❌ |
| Works With Full uBlock Origin | ✅ | ❌ |
| Beautiful Yet Compact Aqua User Interface | ✅ | ❌ |
| Fully Rearrangeable Toolbar | ✅ | ❌ |
| Turns Web Pages Into Dashboard Widgets | ✅ | ❌ |
| Integrated With Spotlight | ✅ | ❌ |
| Has Annoying AI Features You Don't Want | ❌ | ✅ |
As you can clearly see, Safari 7 wins on every important metric.
Now, I can read your mind, and you appear to be very confused. It would seem that the phrase "works with modern websites" is too many words for your simple brain. Fine, here are some screenshots.
View attachment 2685532View attachment 2685533View attachment 2685534View attachment 2685535View attachment 2685536View attachment 2685537
Every screen shot was taken this morning, and the app shown is an unmodified copy of Safari 7.0.6. Every byte of Safari.app is identical to what Apple shipped with OS X 10.9.5 in 2014. There are no tricks. Well, maybe one trick.
WebKit is the web browser engine used by Safari, Mail, Dashboard, and many other apps. It is developed by Apple and is completely open source. Which means I can take the source code and port it to a new platform. Or an old platform.
Aqua WebKit is (currently) based on the same branch of WebKit used by Safari 27 in macOS Golden Gate. It's fast, stable, and even supports features which Apple's WebKit does not, such as the WebExtension APIs needed by the full (not "lite") version of uBlock Origin. And because WebKit is an engine, not an app, it works system-wide. You can make a Web Clip of a live stream and watch it from the Dashboard, make a shortcut to a Google Doc and preview it in Quick Look, or use any other app which embeds a system web view. The old OS and the new internet love each other again.
Thank you so much to everyone who has helped review code, and test and report bugs in early versions of the port! It has been so helpful!
Okay, I'm sold, where can I get this?
If you're running OS X Mavericks, you can download Aqua WebKit from Github. It works best alongside AquaTransport, which you can find on mavericksforever.com.
Please report any issues you run into here. Make sure to include enough information for me to reproduce the problem.
I am so excited to hear about what everyone's experience with the browser is like!
...would you consider sponsoring me?
This project ended up completely taking over my life for the past 4 months. It was also very financially expensive. Furthermore, my professional situation is not in a great place right now.
As a result, I have opened up Github Sponsors. If you appreciate my work on this absolutely ridiculous project, and want me to be able to continue maintaining it and other software for Mavericks, I hope you'll considering sponsoring me. Nothing is expected, but it would be sincerely appreciated.
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And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to try to spend some more time thinking about things which aren't WebKit, which basically hasn't happened since the start of summer... zzzzz