Safari in iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate is no longer just about fast internet, but about working smarter with your open websites. Thanks to Apple Intelligence, the browser becomes an assistant that organizes your tabs, monitors pages for you and interacts better with children in the family.
With Software Update 27, Safari gets four new features that will help you every day: automatic tab topics, custom extensions that you describe with Apple Intelligence, the new Notify Me feature, and the Ask to Visit Website option for parental controls.
Automatically sort tabs into topics
Safari can automatically group your tabs by topic by analyzing the content of each page and recognizing similarities. Consider a group with tabs about your city trip, a group for work-related documents and a group for webshop products that you are comparing.
Tabs are organized based on your surfing behavior, so new tabs are automatically added to the correct group or create a new topic. A big advantage is that you can save these groups so that you can reopen the entire context later or close everything at once when your project is finished. This eliminates the need to manually sort tabs and keeps Safari more organized, especially when switching between iPhone and Mac.
Set up tab organization
- Open Safari on your Mac
- Navigate to the menu bar and click on ‘Safari’
- Choose ‘Settings’
- Go to ‘Tabs’
- Click the drop-down menu next to ‘Organize tabs’
- Choose an option you want: Automatic, on recommended topics, or never
Open Safari on your iPhone or iPad and go to the tab overview. Tap the filter option (three horizontal stripes), select ‘Organize tabs’ and choose the option you want.
Create custom extensions with Apple Intelligence
With Apple Intelligence, Safari gets a ‘Describe an Extension’ feature, which allows you to build your own extensions by simply describing what you need. According to Apple, the extension is then automatically generated and placed as a button in the button bar, without you having to program it yourself.
Apple gives fun examples, such as an extension that changes the language of a pirate-style website or makes pages look like old-school websites from the 1990s with bright colors and eye-catching text. What’s smart is that Apple Intelligence does the logic and appearance for you, so that you as a user can focus on the end result and not on the technical details behind Safari.
For productivity, there are also useful options, such as a short timer to help you focus on the current website, collecting ingredients and steps for recipes, or a button that saves all the important information from the page. Because these extensions work locally on your devices with Apple Intelligence, Apple says your data stays on your own device as much as possible.
Describe extension to use in Safari
- Open a website in Safari
- In the address bar, tap or click the three horizontal lines
- Choose ‘Describe extension’ (Describe Extension)
- Then describe the extension in the appropriate field
- Tap or click Create to add the extension
You can manage all created extensions directly from the website address bar. In the address bar, click or tap the three horizontal stripes and select the one you want extension from the list. Don’t you see this? Then choose ‘Manage extensions‘, select the desired extension and enable it with ‘Allow extension’.
Notify me option in Safari
Safari introduces a Notify me feature that monitors web pages for you and alerts you when important changes occur. For example, Safari can check the availability or price changes of a product page. At preset times, Safari will check the web page in the background for changes and notify you when necessary.
The feature is linked to Apple Intelligence, which helps determine which changes are relevant and when you should be notified. Practical examples include tracking registrations for an event, monitoring a vacancy page or receiving a notification of price drops.
Set up Safari notification function
- Open a website in Safari
- In the address bar, tap or click the three horizontal lines
- Choose ‘Notify me’ or ‘Let me know’
Then select the text field under “What should Safari look for” and specify a change for the browser to consider. Safari will automatically check the web page once a day at a fixed time. Tap ‘Change’ to change this to a different frequency or time. Save the reporting function to enable it. Every time you visit the website, the report to me function will appear at the top of the page and you can also disable it.
Ask to visit parental control website
For families, Apple is introducing the “Ask to Visit Website” feature in Safari. This feature allows parents to limit children’s access to only pre-approved websites. Every new site must first be explicitly allowed.
With Software Update 27 for iPhone, iPad and Mac, Apple is bringing several new parental control features to child accounts, tailored to the child’s unique needs, education and age. Once the “Ask to Visit Website” feature is enabled, a child can continue browsing approved websites. When a new request for access to a website is made, the parent or guardian will receive a notification to give permission.
The parent receives this request on an iPhone, iPad or Mac and can choose to allow the website once or permanently, or to refuse the request. In practice, this means that you can give children more independence in opening links, while you retain control over new domains that they have not yet visited. This is especially useful when search results lead kids to different sites, allowing you to better filter out unexpected or inappropriate content without completely blocking the Internet.