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Showing content from https://webkit.org/blog/14445/webkit-features-in-safari-17-0/ below:

WebKit Features in Safari 17.0

Today’s the day for Safari 17.0. It’s now available for iOS 17 and iPadOS 17.

[Update September 26th] And now, Safari 17.0 is available for macOS Ventura, and macOS Monterey, and macOS Sonoma. Safari 17.0 is also available in the vision OS Simulator, where you can test your website by downloading the latest beta of Xcode 15, which supports the visionOS SDK.

If you are running macOS Ventura or macOS Monterey, you can update Safari by going to Software Update and clicking “More info”. On macOS Ventura, that’s  > System Settings > General > Software Update > More info, and choose to update Safari. To get Safari 17.0 on your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > General > Software Update and tap to update to iOS 17 or iPadOS 17.

HTML The new search element

While new web technology is defined in web standards all the time, it’s rare for a brand-new HTML element to come along. It only happens when something meets very high expectations of utility. Search is a key function for most websites, so now, there’s a new element — <search>.

Up until now, search boxes were often constructed in markup like this:

<div class="search-box" role="search">
  <form action="/search">
    <p><input type="search" name="q"> <input type="submit" value="Search!"></p>   
  </form>
</div>

Notice the presence of ARIA role="search" on the first line of code above. Without the ARIA search role, search functionality is not made properly accessible to all users — a problem that’s far too easy to create.

The <search> element automatically provides the correct accessibility semantics for the search section of a website or web app. This aligns with the principles of HTML, making the default accessible, instead of requiring you to remember to take an action to add accessibility. The <search> element also supplies the semantic markup for communicating the inherent meaning of a search form to a wide range of computing contexts, from translation algorithms to machine learning.

We are excited to be the first browser to ship this new <search> element, now supported in Safari 17.0.

<search>
  <form action="/search">
    <p><input type="search" name="q"> <input type="submit" value="Search!"></p>   
  </form>
</search>

Browsers without support for the search element will recognize there is an element present, and they will recognize any attributes it has — including roles, IDs, and classes. It will simply behave like a generic element, as if it were a <div>. Because of this, we recommend you include an ARIA search role on the <search> element for now. By using <search role="search">, you will ensure every user has the intended experience. And in the future, when all browsers have support, you can drop the ARIA search role.

In the meantime, you can start using <search> today with confidence, long before a significant percent of your audience use browsers with support.

Popover

Safari 17.0 adds support for the popover attribute. It provides a framework built into the web for displaying overlays, popups, popovers, and dialogs.

There are two types of popovers, which can be used as values for the popover attribute:

Start with a button (either <button> or <input type="button">) to create the UI for opening and closing the popover. Then, add the appropriate HTML attributes to create the desired result.

The popovertarget attribute connects the button to the popover content through an ID. The optional popovertargetaction attribute takes show, hide, or toggle as values. By default, toggle is used.

<button popovertarget="info-box" popovertargetaction="show">More info</button>

<article id="info-box" popover="auto">
  <h2>Additional Information</h2>
  <p>Here’s something I wanted to tell you.</p>
  <button popovertarget="info-box" popovertargetaction="hide">Close</button>
</article>

This is just one UI pattern you might find useful. There are many possible combinations. Having a popover mechanism in HTML makes for quick work, while ensuring great usability and full accessibility.

To go beyond a simple button trigger, a JavaScript API opens up more powerful possibilities through showPopover(), hidePopover(), and togglePopover().

Horizontal rules inside select elements

Safari 17.0 on macOS also adds support for <hr> inside of <select>, a feature the WebKit team added to the HTML web standard. This makes it easier to create a visual separator between items without requiring the use of JavaScript.

<select>
  <option value="pizza">Pizza</option>
  <option value="hamburger">Hamburger</option>
  <hr>
  <option value="sushi">Ice cream</option>
  <option value="pasta">Cake</option>
</select>
CSS Font size adjust

In Safari 16.4, we shipped initial support for font-size-adjust, which allows you to easily make the visual size of different fonts consistent — even across all possible combinations of fallback fonts.

The basic version of font-size-adjust lets you tell the browser to resize letters so that their x-height is a specific ratio of the font-size. In Safari 17.0, we’re expanding support to include more advance capabilities of font-size-adjust, including the from-font value and the two-value syntax.

The two-value syntax lets you to switch from adjusting ex-height to adjusting cap-height, ch-width, ic-width, or ic-height — providing support for a broader range of writing systems and design choices.

Learn more about how `font-size-adjust` works by watching What’s New in CSS from WWDC23.

Instead of declaring a ratio with a number value, the from-font value allows you to ask the browser to pull the sizing metric from the primary font being specified, and apply that ratio to all fonts.

Let’s look at an example. Here, font-size-adjust tells the browser to make all of the fonts inside article match the size of the x-height of the main font being used. This means all of the text in paragraphs and code will visually appear to be the same size, no matter which font is applied from either stack, or how different the paragraph and code fonts appear in actual size.

article { 
  font-family: "Iowan Old Style", "Palatino Linotype", "URW Palladio L", P052, serif;
  font-size: 1.4rem;
  font-size-adjust: from-font;
}
article code {
  font-family: "Courier New", monospace;
}

Safari 17.0 also adds support for @font-face size-adjust, providing a way for you to normalize visual size when defining a font’s use.

Text transform

Safari 17.0 adds support for text-transform: full-width and text-transform: full-size-kana.

The full-width value transforms all the characters in your text to be “full-width” — to match the width of characters defined in an East Asian script like Chinese, Japanese, or Korean (CJK). It’s especially useful when typesetting vertical text or wanting to provide consistency in sizing when mixing CJK with Latin or other scripts.

The full-size-kana value transforms the size of small Kana characters in Japanese to look like their full-size counterparts — a technique sometimes used to make ruby text more legible at small sizes.

Safari 17.0 also adds support for declaring more than one text-transform value, so that these values can be combined. For example text-transform: uppercase full-width will transform characters in a Latin script to be both all capital letters and the same width as the CJK characters in the font.

Font support testing

To expand what’s possible with web typography, Safari 17.0 adds two feature queries for conditionally applying CSS depending on the presence or absence of browser support for a particular font format or technology: @supports font-format() and @supports font-tech().

The font format feature query tests for support of specific font formats, like opentype and woff2. The font tech feature query lets you test for support of specific OpenType technologies, like COLRv0.

@supports not (font-tech(color-COLRv0) or font-tech(color-COLRv1)) {
  h1 {
    color: --text-color-for-non-color-fonts;
  }
}

Safari 17.0 also adds support for @font-face { src: url() tech() }, making it easy to tell the browser to download and use a font only if its underlying technology is supported, while providing alternative font files as fallbacks.

@font-face {
    font-family: "My Cool Font";
    src: url("mycoolfont-COLRv0.otf") format(opentype) tech(color-COLRv0),
         url("mycoolfont-COLRv1.otf") format(opentype) tech(color-COLRv1),
         url("mycoolfont-outline.otf") format(opentype);
}
Hyphenation

Supported in Safari with -webkit- prefixes since 2011, the hyphens and hyphenate-character properties are now supported in their unprefixed form.

The hyphens property lets you specify whether or not words should be hyphenated when text wraps onto multiple lines. The default, hyphens:manual, causes the browser to hyphenate only at manually-specified points. You can instead ask the browser to insert hyphens automatically according to an algorithm. Be sure to use the lang attribute to identify the langauge being used, so the browser can reference the correct hyphenation dictionary.

<html lang="en-US">
  <p>Content that will be hyphenated according to 
  the grammatical rules of U.S. English.<p>
</html>           

article {
  hyphens: auto;
}

The hyphenate-character property lets you specify which character (or string) to use when breaking words. By default, it’s set to the content language’s typographic conventions. In English, for example, it’s set to -. But if you need to change it, you can.

Counter styles

Safari 17.0 adds support for @counter-style.

Learn more about how CSS Counters and Counter Styles work by watching What’s New in CSS from WWDC23.

CSS Counter Styles provide a mechanism for changing a counter’s language or character set in CSS — both for ordered/unordered lists (with list-style-type) and for CSS Counters.

For example, I can define a counting system for Serbian, and use it to number ordered lists.

@counter-style upper-serbian {
  system: alphabetic;
  symbols: 'А' 'Б' 'В' 'Г' 'Д' 'Ђ' 'Е' 'Ж' 'З' 'И' 'Ј' 'К' 'Л' 'Љ' 'М' 'Н' 'Њ' 'О' 'П' 'Р' 'С' 'Т' 'Ћ' 'У' 'Ф' 'Х' 'Ц' 'Ч' 'Џ' 'Ш';
}
ol { 
  list-style: upper-serbian; 
}
Display contents

WebKit for Safari 17.0 fixes our remaining accessibility issues with display:contents.

Improvements in the experience of elements which are styled display:contents include:

Safari 17.0 also fixes accessibility issues with HTML tables and table components that have display: flex, grid, block, or inline-block applied.

Media Queries

Safari 17.0 completes WebKit’s support for the Media Queries level 4 web standard, adding support for four new media queries.

Like other media queries, overflow-block and overflow-inline provide a way to conditionally apply CSS depending on the qualities of a user’s device — in this case, how a device handles overflow. For example, can it scroll the page like a typical browser on a computer? Does it page the content, like an e-book reader? Or does it have no mechanism for handling overflow, like a digital billboard?

The update media query provides a way to apply CSS depending on the refresh rate of the device. For instance, e-book reader screens often have slower refresh rates. A printed page has no refresh rate at all.

We’ve also added support for thescripting media query. It allows you to conditionally apply CSS based on whether or not JavaScript support is enabled in the user’s browser.

Image set

Safari 17.0 also improves our implementation of image-set(), increasing interoperability with other browsers as part of our commitment to Interop 2023.

The image-set()function lets you list a set of images in CSS, with information about each, and have the browser pick the most appropriate image to use from that set. Safari 17.0 now supports the optional resolution and type arguments.

The resolution argument provides a way to declare information about the resolution of each image: 1x, 2x, 600dpi, etc.

The type argument provides a means to offer multiple file types — including the JPEG XL and HEIC formats newly supported in Safari 17.0. The browser will download and use the first one it supports.

main {
  background-image: image-set(
    url("images/trees.jxl") type("image/jxl"),
    url("images/trees.avif") type("image/avif"),
    url("images/trees.jpeg") type("image/jpeg")
  );
}
Container Queries

To keep up with the most recent changes to the web standard for Container Queries, Safari 17.0 adds support in CSSOM for containerName and containerQuery , and updates conditionText to be the concatenation of the first two in CSSContainerRule.

And more CSS

Safari 17.0 also adds support for contain-intrinsic-size, providing the means for setting the size of an element, when that element is subject to size containment.

To increase the usefulness of :has(), WebKit now supports :has(:buffering) and :has(:stalled). These expand the ability to apply CSS conditionally based on the state of media playback. Safari 17.0 also supports :has(:defined) letting you apply styling in the presence of a custom element that’s been defined.

JavaScript and Web API Storage

Safari 17.0 and WebKit for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS now fully support the Storage API.

WebKit is also updating the storage quota policy. Previously, an origin had a starting storage limit of 1 GB. When exceeding that limit, the subsequent storage operation would fail in Home Screen web apps or prompt the user to give permission to increase the quota in Safari.

Now, the origin quota is calculated based on total disk space. This means an origin generally gets a much higher limit, and users will no longer receive permission prompts in Safari. You can use StorageManager.estimate() to get estimated usage and quota values per origin.

With each origin getting a higher storage limit by default, WebKit will evict data by origin when the total usage of all origins together is bigger than a certain value — the “overall quota”, calculated based on total disk space.

An origin is exempt from eviction when its storage mode is persistent. To check the storage mode of your origin, you can use navigator.storage.persisted(). To request the mode be changed to persistent, you can use navigator.storage.persist(). Critical bugs have been fixed to ensure the storage mode value is remembered across sessions.

Read Updates to Storage Policy for many more details, along with example code.

Offscreen Canvas

When using Canvas, the rendering, animation, and user interaction usually happens on the main execution thread of a web application. Offscreen Canvas provides a canvas that can be rendered off-screen, decoupling the DOM and the Canvas API so that the <canvas> element is no longer entirely dependent on the DOM. Rendering can be transferred to a worker context, allowing you to run tasks in a separate thread and avoid heavy work on the main thread that can negatively impact the user experience. The combination of DOM-independent operations and rendering of the main thread can provide a significantly better experience for users, especially on low-power devices.

Support for Offscreen Canvas 2D operations shipped in Safari 16.4. Now, Safari 17.0 for macOS Sonoma, iPadOS 17 and iOS 17 adds support for WebGL in Offscreen Canvas, bringing these benefits to 3D.

Canvas

The CanvasRenderingContext2D.drawImage() method of the Canvas 2D API supports different sources of an image to be drawn onto the canvas. Safari 17.0 adds support for SVG by allowing SVGImageElement as an image source to drawImage().

RegEx

Safari 17.0 adds JavaScript support for two new features for Regular Expressions: RegExp v flag with set notation + properties of strings and RegExp duplicate named capture groups.

RegExp v flag allows for the creation of regular expressions containing Unicode properties, including some multi-character Emoji sequences. It also allows for creating regular expressions with union, intersection, and subtraction set operations on character classes and collections of strings.

Duplicate named capture group enables the creation of regular expressions with named captures where more than one capture group uses the same name. This allows you to create regular expressions with intuitive group names where there is more than a one-way pattern to search. An example is creating one regular expression that can search data strings written in multiple ways, e.g. M/D/Y versus D-M-Y, while extracting the matched results with captured group names month, day, and year regardless of which string format was matched.

Set Operations

Another new JavaScript feature adds seven Set operation methods, including intersection() and union(), as well the comparison methods difference(), isSubsetOf() and isSuperSetOf(). Together these new methods make Sets powerful first class objects.

const setA = new Set(["apples", "oranges", "grapes"]);
const setB = new Set(["bananas", "grapes", "apples"]);

const union = setA.union(setB);

const intersect = setA.intersection(setB);

const diff = setA.difference(setB);

Also check out the new .symmetricDifference() and .isDisjointFrom() methods, which open up some interesting comparison possibilities.

Gamepad API

WebKit for Safari 17.0 adds support for Gamepad.prototype.vibrationActuator. It enables “dual-rumble” haptic feedback on gamepads. The API allows you to check if “dual-rumble” is supported by the gamepad, as well as control the duration and magnitude of the haptic effect.

const [gamepad] = navigator.getGamepads();
if (gamepad?.vibrationActuator?.canPlayEffectType("dual-rumble")) {
  const options = {
    duration: 1000,     startDelay: 0,     strongMagnitude: 0.5,     weakMagnitude: 0.2,    };
  gamepad.vibrationActuator.playEffect("dual-rumble", options);
}
URL API

Traditionally, to ensure you could parse a URL, you needed to use a try sequence. Now, you can directly detect if an URL input can be parsed with URL.canParse(tentativeURL, optionalBase). The method will return true or false.

In addition, the has() and delete() methods on URLSearchParams have been extended. The has() method makes it possible to detect if a parameter has been set. And the delete() method can delete a parameter. Until now, you could only check for and delete by name alone. Now, the methods have been extended so that you can check for and delete specific name-value pairs.

For example, on an URL with duplicate key such as https://example.com/?currency=USD&currency=JPY, before you could only check params.has('currency'). Now, it’s possible to do params.has('currency', 'JPY').

Be mindful that with this update, method signatures are not directly feature detectable, so they can return false positives. Until all browsers support these updates, be sure to run a test to confirm support. For example:

function supportsUpdatedURLHasMethod() {
    const param = new URLSearchParams({ key: "value" });
    return param.has("key", "does not exist") === false;
}

function supportsUpdatedURLDeleteMethod() {
    const param = new URLSearchParams({ key: "value" });
    param.delete("key", "does not exist");
    return param.has("key");
}
Web Sockets

You can now use relative URLs (as well as HTTP(S) URLs) in the WebSocket constructor — this makes it a lot easier to point to WebSocket endpoints without hard-coding URLs into your web application. For example, new WebSocket('/updates').

And more JavaScript and Web API Images and video JPEG XL

Safari 17.0 adds support for JPEG XL. The new image format provides another modern option for finding the right balance between visual quality and file size.

JPEG XL uses a new compression algorithm called “Modular Entropy Coding” that allows for greater flexibility in adjusting the compression ratio. Similar to JPEG, it has support for progressive loading, making it well-suited for images served over slow connections, since users start to see the image before the whole file is downloaded. And you can recompress existing JPEG files into JPEG XL without any loss of quality or data, while reducing their size by an average of 20%. Or compress from the original image file to create a file that’s up to 60% smaller compared to JPEG.

Use the <picture> element to provide JPEG XL files to browsers that have support, while easily providing a fallback format to browsers that don’t.

<picture>
  <source srcset="images/sophie.jxl" type="image/jxl">
  <img src="images/sophie.jpg" alt="tiny brown puppy sleeping in the sun">
</picture>

JPEG XL is supported by WebKit for Safari 17.0, Safari View Controller and WKWebView on iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, macOS Sonoma, macOS Ventura and macOS Monterey.

HEIC

Safari 17.0 also adds support for HEIC images. A HEIC photo can take up about half the space of an equivalent-quality JPEG file.

HEIC is the image format used across Apple devices to store photos captured by the cameras, as well as in iCloud Photos. With support for HEIC in Safari, Safari View Controller, and WKWebView, you can now support importing and editing such photos right in the browser, without needing to convert them into another format. HEIC is also ideal for displaying images when using WKWebView inside an app.

Learn more about JPEG XL and HEIC by watching Explore media formats for the web at WWDC23.

AV1

Safari 17.0 adds support for AV1 video on devices with hardware decoding support, like iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The AV1 video codec adds another option for delivering video across the web, while finding the right balance between gorgeous quality and smaller file sizes. Hardware encoding/decoding provides an efficient way support the video codec without an undesired impact on battery life.

The progressively-enhanced nature of the web makes it easy to provide files in a variety of options, and let the user’s browser choose the one that’s best for them.

<video controls>
  <source src='dogs-in-AV1.mp4' 
          type='video/mp4 codecs="av01.0.19M.10.0.110.09.16.09.0, mp4a.40.5" '>
  <source src='dogs-in-HEVC.mp4' 
          type='video/mp4 codecs="hev1.2.4.L120.B0", mp4a.40.2" '>        
  <source src='dogs-in-VP9.webm' 
          type='video/webm codecs="vp9, vorbis" '>
</video>

In this example, the three options are compressed using AV1, HEVC (H.265), and VP9 video codecs, while being delivered in two video file formats: MP4 and WebM. That’s because compressed videos are delivered across the web inside a media container that has its own file format, like MPEG-4, WebM, Ogg, or QuickTime MOV. That container holds both the video stream, compressed in a particular codec, and the audio stream, compressed in another codec.

As a developer, you use the source element to link to each file, list the type of file, and specify the codecs being offered — providing the browser with the information it needs to decide which file to start streaming. The type attribute specifies the MIME type of the container, along with codec information about how the video and audio are each compressed. The browser will use the first file that it fully supports.

The AV1 codecs parameter string can communicate not only that the video is compressed with AV1, but other characteristics of the video, including the color space and dynamic range. For example, you could use av01.0.19M.10.0.110.09.16.09.0 for a video compressed with AV1 Main Profile, level 6.2, Main tier, 10-bit HDR. That’s basically asking the browser “do you support AV1 with a 10-bits-per-color and HDR colorspace? If so, here’s a file for you.” You could instead use a simpler version, codecs="av01", to ask only “hey, do you support AV1?”

Managed Media Source

Watching streaming video is an amazing thing we all do with our devices. But to get the highest-possible quality of video, without downloading any unnecessary data and without killing the battery — it takes a complicated stack of technology working under the hood every time you hit the play button.

Adaptive bitrate streaming is a technique for switching between media data formats on the fly, to ensure delivery of the best-possible video quality based on the speed of the internet connection and capabilities of the device, even as those conditions change. For example, adaptive streaming can be configured to switch from 4k to HD resolution when the network slows, to prioritize playback-without-lag over higher-visual-quality.

For years, many websites have used Media Source Extensions (MSE) to handle adaptive bitrate streaming. It’s a low-level toolkit that gives the web page more control and more responsibility for managing buffering and resolution. But MSE isn’t particularly good at managing buffer levels, network access, and media variant selection. Plus, it uses a lot of power, which can be especially painful on mobile devices with smaller batteries.

Managed Media Source is a brand-new, power-efficient solution that fulfills advanced needs for streaming video. It supports the flexibility and capabilities of MSE, without any of the drawbacks.

WebKit for Safari 17.0 brings the new Managed Media Source API to iPad and Mac, with iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma, macOS Ventura, and macOS Monterey. Managed Media Source is also available on iPhone with iOS 17.1 beta.

Note that support for Managed Media Source is only available when an AirPlay source alternative is present or remote playback is explicitly disabled.

const videoSource1 = document.createElement('source');
videoSource1. type = 'video/mp4' ;
videoSource1.src = URL.createObjectURL(mediasource);
video.appendChild(videoSource1) ;
const videoSource2 = document.createElement('source');
videoSource2. type = 'application/x-mpegURL' ;
videoSource2.src = "http://devimages.apple.com/iphone/samples/bipbop/bipbopall.m3u8";
video.appendChild(videoSource2);

Learn all about Managed Media Source API by watching Explore media formats for the web at WWDC23.

Media player stats overlay

If you’ve enabled Developer Features, Safari now provides a media player stats overlay where you can see technical details about a video — its source type, size, performance metrics, resolution, codec string, and color configuration. To show the overlay, use the context menu on any <video> element and select “Show Media Stats”. Now you can tell at a glance the exact codec and configuration used by media on your page and use that information to help you write your code, including craft accurate queries in MediaCapabilities.

And more video and audio

Safari 17.0 on macOS Sonoma adds support for one or two channel Opus audio in WebM and MPEG-4 containers.

WebKit now supports USB cameras on iPadOS 17. When a USB camera is attached to an iPad, it’s included in the output of enumerateDevices and is selectable with getUserMedia along with the built-in cameras.

Improvements to WebRTC add support for InputDeviceInfo, the inbound rtp trackIdentifier stat field, exposing zoom in MediaTrackCapabilities, and getDisplayMedia video track clone resizing.

WebKit for Safari 17.0 adds additional support for low-power mode and optimizing video streaming by tone mapping HDR video to SDR.

And Safari 17.0 adds support for WebCodecs temporal scalabilityMode for software codecs, including parsing and error handling.

Web apps on Mac

Safari 17.0 for macOS Sonoma is now available. And with it, web apps come to Mac.

You can add a website — any website — to your Dock. In Safari, go to File > Add to Dock, adjust the name and icon if desired, and the web app icon appears in your Dock.

Web apps on Mac let you focus on the websites you use all the time, separate from the rest of your browsing. Like all Mac apps, web apps work great with Stage Manager, Mission Control, and keyboard shortcuts like Command + Tab. Web apps can be opened from the Dock, Launchpad, and Spotlight Search. Web apps work with AutoFill credentials from iCloud Keychain and from third-party apps that have adopted the Credential Provider Extension API. And users can grant permission to a web app to use their camera, microphone and location in the same way they grant such permissions to other Mac apps through system prompts and the Privacy & Security section of System Settings. Web apps on Mac support web push, badging, service workers, web app manifests, and all the usual web standards implemented by WebKit, just like web apps on iOS and iPadOS.

When a user clicks on a web app icon, the website always opens in its own window as a web app, even if the site does not have a manifest file (or legacy meta tags). This expands the usefulness of web apps, putting users in charge of determining what becomes a web app and giving them the confidence it’s always something they can choose.

While the default web app experience on Mac is great, as a web app developer you can use web technologies like Service Workers to make it even better. By providing a web app manifest, you can customize the presentation of your web app, including the display mode, name, theme color, and start URL. Learn about the details by watching What’s new in Web Apps at WWDC23.

When a user adds a website to their Dock, Safari will copy the website’s cookies to the web app. That way, if someone is logged into their account in Safari, they will remain logged in within the web app. This will only work if the authentication state is stored within cookies. Safari does not copy over any other kind of local storage. After a user adds a web app to the Dock, no other website data is shared, which is great for privacy.

Add to Home Screen from Safari View Controller

Add to Home Screen is now available from Safari View Controller on iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. Tapping a link within an app that uses Safari View Controller as the in-app browser allows the user to add the open website to their Home Screen right from there. Just like Add to Home Screen from Safari on iOS and iPadOS (or any other browser that implemented support), if the website has a manifest file with a display mode of standalone or fullscreen, it will open as a Home Screen web app.

Web Developer Tools

Safari 17.0 brings significant changes to the experience of our web developer tools. Be sure to enable Developer Features to gain access to the Web Inspector, Develop Menu, Feature Flags, Responsive Design Mode, the ability to connect to iOS / iPadOS / visionOS Simulators, and much more.

Redesigned Develop Menu

In Safari 17.0 on macOS Sonoma, macOS Ventura and macOS Monterey, a completely redesigned Develop menu makes it easier to find the key tools available to help you create websites, web apps, web content inside other apps, web extensions, and more.

Devices and simulators are now more prominent in the Develop menu, making them easier to identify at a glance. Inside the menu for each iOS or iPadOS device, app icons make it easier to find the application or web content you want to inspect. On macOS Sonoma, you can pair with Apple TV and Vision Pro directly from Safari to inspect those platforms.

Rethought Feature Flags

The new Feature Flags panel replaces the previous Experimental Features section of the Develop menu, allowing you to search for specific features and to easily see bolded features toggled from their default state. Feature flags are now organized by topic: Animation, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Media and more. And each feature is clearly categorized into one of four statuses: Stable, Testable, Preview, and Developer.

Stable represents features that have recently shipped in Safari, on by default. These features can be turned off to help you debug an issue or test progressive enhancements. Stable features will eventually be removed from the list.

Testable features are disabled by default. These features might be in the process of being implemented, or they might be waiting for changes to the web standards. They have a ways to go, but still could be interesting enough to test out.

Preview is for features that have not yet shipped in Safari, but are closer to being complete. These features are on by default in Safari Technology Preview, and are ready for developers to try out. They may still have bugs, or may even undergo significant change as their web standards evolve. This is a great time to help find bugs and file issues, and to comment on whether the web standard for a new technologies solves your needs.

Developer features are not as common. This category is for miscellaneous features added to the list of feature flags so developers can toggle them on and off for testing. New developer tools may appear here, for example.

New Developer settings panel

The new Developer panel in Safari 17’s Settings let you toggle developer features that apply across all websites open in Safari, like Allow remote automation (which enables automating Safari with WebDriver) and other features that were previously in the Develop menu.

New tab-specific setting overlay

Some previously-global settings from the Develop menu, like disabling JavaScript or changing WebRTC behavior, have moved to Web Inspector where they are now scoped to the inspected tab, allowing you to use other tabs and windows normally.

Redesigned Responsive Web Design Mode

Responsive Design Mode has also been refreshed to focus on the responsiveness of a page’s design at any width or height on your Mac. You can type in a specific viewport size at the top of Responsive Design Mode in addition to dragging the resize handles around the view.

Also new is the ability to open the page in a Simulator right from Responsive Design Mode.

Simulators

You can also open any page from Safari in a Simulator directly from the Develop > Open Page With menu, even when you are not using Responsive Design Mode.

Using a Simulator is a great way to test the experiences you’re making on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS — including device-specific behaviors, like the rendered size of type, the effects of the viewport meta tag, double-tap to zoom, and even Home Screen web apps on iOS and iPadOS. Simulators are free, and come included with Xcode from the Mac App Store.

If you don’t have Xcode installed, a link to documentation is conveniently available in the Develop > Open Page With menu to help you get started, or to add more devices and OS versions.

Learn all about the new Develop menu, redesigned Responsive Web Design mode, how to easily connect to directly to a real device, how to install and use a Simulator, and much more in Rediscover Safari developer features at WWDC23.

Web Inspector

We’ve also made improvements to Web Inspector. When working with minified sources, pretty printing in Web Inspector can help make the code easier to read, set breakpoints in, and debug. New in Safari 17.0, more JavaScript syntax is supported for pretty printing minified scripts, including template strings, optional chaining, private variables and functions in classes, and static variables and functions.

Changes to Web Inspector in Safari 17.0 also include:

Learn more by watching What’s new in Web Inspector at WWDC23.

Security GPU Process

Last year brought GPU process support to WebKit on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. This year we’re adding support on macOS Sonoma. The change moves all drawing (including the drawing of page content, 2D Canvas and WebGL rendering) so it occurs in the “GPU Process”. This new architecture allows WebKit to isolate powerful graphics hardware and driver access away from the WebContent process, which is the process that interacts with untrusted content from the internet. The new design also allows the WebContent process sandbox to completely block IOKit access, resulting in improved security.

WebKit API

New interfaces are added to WKWebsiteDataStore and related classes to further unlock potential of your WebKit apps. The new capabilities include creating persistent website data stores, configuring cookie policy, customizing proxy settings, requesting HTTPS upgrade for all navigations, and controlling state of inline prediction for autocomplete.

Browser changes Safari Profiles

Safari 17.0 adds support for profiles. History, favorites, Tab Groups and website data such as cookies, caches, service workers, and Web Push subscriptions are scoped per-profile. Users can manage each profile’s data individually.

Safari Private Browsing

In Safari 17.0, Private Browsing gets even more private with added protection against some of the most advanced techniques used to track you. Technical changes include:

Editing and Live Text

iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma feature a redesigned experience of editing text, with even more accurate autocorrect and predictions inline as you type. In Safari 17.0 on macOS Sonoma, the redesigned text cursor now uses the system accent color, just like iOS. CJK marked text also has a new appearance and matches the system accent color.

Safari 17.0 also improves the interoperability of the Range API and Selection API. And it adds Live Text support for vertical text recognition in images and videos.

Apple Pay via Payment Request API

You can now enable Apple Pay to be used in third-party iframes by setting the allow="payment" attribute. This “permissions policy” enables the Payment Request API on an iframe, allowing you to embed third-party payment handlers. If using this feature, be sure you also use the X-Frames-Options HTTP header to prevent your site from being embedded by malicious websites.

Authentication

Safari 17.0 adds support for largeBlob extension for passkeys. Websites can use the additional storage to save data that can later be retrieved when signing in with a passkey. These saved blobs are synced and shared along with passkeys.

We also are adding support for enterprise WebAuthn attestation for passkeys in iCloud Keychain. Managed devices can provide an attestation statement when creating passkeys, using a certificate provisioned through MDM.

Networking

Safari 17.0 adds support for HTTP Early Hints and preconnect.

Lockdown mode

Lockdown mode now:

Lockdown Mode is also now supported in WebKit on watchOS.

Safari Extensions

Safari 17.0 now lets you customize where extensions run with even more granularity.

First, Safari App Extensions now have the same per-site permissions model as Safari Web Extensions. It puts users in control over the browsing data they share with every extension they use in Safari.

Second, as an additional layer of control, Safari Extensions can be turned off in Private Browsing. Extensions that access browsing data, like browsing history or webpage contents, will be off by default in Private Browsing but can be allowed with a single toggle in Safari Settings.

Third, all Safari Extensions can be turned on or off per Safari Profile. You can imagine this being useful for turning on an extension used only for school or work in a relevant profile, but keeping it off everywhere else. Each profile runs a separate instance of the extension — meaning there are unique storage areas, background pages, service workers, and more. However, per-site permissions are shared across profiles, so an extension only needs to be granted once. If your extension leverages native messaging capabilities to communicate with a host app, it’s possible to distinguish between profiles to ensure your extension behaves correctly across profiles.

Learn more by watching What’s new in Safari extensions at WWDC23.

Bug Fixes and more

In addition to the over 65 new features, WebKit for Safari 17.0 includes an incredible amount work polishing existing features.

Accessibility Canvas CSS DOM Editing Forms HTML HTTP JavaScript Media Rendering Safari Extensions Storage SVG Tables Web Animations Web API Web apps Web Inspector WebGL WebRTC Feedback

We love hearing from you. Send a reply on X to @webkit to share your thoughts on Safari 17.0. You can find us on Mastodon at @jensimmons@front-end.social and @jondavis@mastodon.social. If you run into any issues, we welcome your feedback on Safari UI, or your WebKit bug report about web technologies or Web Inspector. Filing issues really does make a difference.

Download the latest Safari Technology Preview to stay at the forefront of the web platform and to use the latest Web Inspector features. You can also read the Safari 17.0 release notes.

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