Safari 12.0 now available: the 7 most important improvements in a row

macOS Mojave won’t be released until next Monday, but the big Safari update is already here: these are all the improvements Apple’s browser is making this year.

Safari 12.0 now available

This major Safari update will be a standard part of macOS Mojave this Monday. If you don’t want to wait for this as a macOS Sierra or High Sierra user, you can also install it now via an update in the Mac App Store.

Just like iOS, macOS and watchOS, Safari also gets a major update every year. Version 12.0 of Apple’s browser brings a number of nice improvements, mainly simplifying the way you use Safari. These are the main improvements.

Safari 12.0 now available: the 7 most important improvements in a row

1. Support for Favicons

A small but very nice improvement is the introduction of Favicons. This adds icons to the tabs that you have pinned in your browser, which makes it a lot easier to see which pages are still open. Before this update, these tabs were simply indicated by the first letter, so you did not see any difference with Inbox and iPhoned, for example. Read below how to set up Favicons on both macOS and iOS.

Also read: This is how you use favicons in Safari with iOS 12 and macOS Mojave

2. Automatically fill in and suggest passwords

Just like iOS 12, Safari on the Mac will also do its best to let you use better passwords, which are also easier to enter. From now on, Safari will automatically enter a password during login if you have it stored in your iCloud Keychain or Password Manager. LastPass, 1PassWord and Dashlane, among others, already support this new option.

3. Notifications when reusing the same password

As an extension of this feature, Safari also keeps track of which passwords you may use multiple times. It is very unsafe to use the same password for different accounts, so the browser will now notify you if you do this (accidentally).

4. Better blocking of pop-ups on websites

To avoid annoying windows that pop up spontaneously when you open a website, you can block these pop-ups in Safari from today. You can choose between blocking by default, not blocking or first being notified whether such pop-ups should be stopped. This works as follows:

Open Safari and click on ‘Safari’ in the menu bar at the top left;
Choose ‘Preferences’ and go to ‘Websites’;
Scroll to ‘Pop-up windows’ in the left bar;
Indicate your default setting at the bottom and adjust them per site if necessary.

5. Better privacy protection

Every year Apple makes privacy protection a little better with its updates. This year, the company is taking a big step by blocking the Like buttons from Facebook and other social networks. These buttons are used to secretly track your web traffic. From Safari 12.0 you must first give explicit permission for this to happen.

6. Automatically disable demanding extensions

To improve the performance and extend the battery life of your MacBook, Safari will automatically disable extensions that negatively affect your browser performance. You can also turn this setting back on in Safari Preferences. In this way, Apple will take tougher action against extensions from third-party developers that do not consider optimization in terms of performance.

7. Security improved

Finally, Safari’s overall security has also increased again. In addition to the aforementioned adjustments to better ensure user privacy, Apple will now only support extensions that have been approved by the company itself. With this, Apple prevents you from accidentally installing a malicious extension that will still take off with your browser data.

Safari 12.0 now available: the 7 most important improvements in a row