Search Files

Passkeys, password managers and Google. A site's passkey button now brings up the Mac's own passkey sheet — Touch ID, your iPhone, a security key — and 1Password, Bitwarden and Proton Pass get their fixes. Pages no longer see anything of Search that Safari doesn't show them, the mark Google took for a robot's; a saved password is offered only on its own site; and Search can be the Mac's default browser. New, each off until you turn it on in Settings: a bookmarks bar, a peek at a link with a shift-click, the video that follows you to another app, pages at 120 Hz, and where a link goes. Also new: mute a tab, share a page, copy a link as Markdown, the mouse's back and forward buttons, and spaces in the bar across the top. Faster to open, new tabs in about 10 ms, and many fixes. If passkeys still fail after the update, restart your Mac once.

Added

• A bookmarks bar, as in Chrome and Safari: your bookmarks in a row above the page, folders opening as menus. Off unless turned on, in Settings › Tabs › Show the bookmarks bar or Bookmarks › Show Bookmarks Bar; it folds away with the tabs.
• Peek at a link, as in Arc: shift-click it and its page opens in a panel over the one you are reading. Escape, ⌘W or a click beside it puts it away; its other button keeps it as a tab beside this one, without loading it again. Off unless turned on: Settings › General › Peek at a link with a shift-click. Thanks @beyondbriks for the idea
• The video that comes out into its floating window when you leave its tab (YouTube and the like) can be kept in its tab: Settings › General › Float the video when you switch tabs, on as before. ⇧⌘P still floats one by hand. Thanks @mihsanbudiman for asking
• The site you are on, in a card: click the tab you are on to change its address, and a card comes up under it with whether the connection is private (a step in shows the certificate), Copy Address, Print and the page's zoom. It goes as soon as you type. Right-click a tab › Site Information… opens it too. In the column and in the bar across the top alike, with nothing added to either. The card is from @kndpt's address bar (#56), which stayed out: Search has the column or the bar, never a second row over the page.
• Mute a tab and let it play on: press the speaker at the end of a tab that plays sound, or pick Mute Tab in its right-click menu. A muted tab keeps a crossed-out speaker, to be heard again the same way. Thanks @merttopuz (#61)
• File › Share… sends the page where the Mac would send it: Mail, Messages, AirDrop, Notes and the rest, as Safari's Share button does. Thanks @merttopuz (#78)
• Pages at 120 Hz on a screen that can, like a MacBook Pro's: animations and scrolling in pages drawn up to 120 times a second instead of about 60. Settings › General › Pages at 120 Hz, off by default, as in Safari; it uses more battery. Open tabs follow when reloaded. Thanks @AxxzyWasTaken (#87)
• Brave Search and Qwant join the engines in Settings › General › Search with. Thanks @vivescene (#52)
• A middle-click on a link opens it in a tab of its own beside the one you are on, and leaves you where you were — the same thing ⌘-click does, for hands that learned it that way. (#45) Thanks @Dodothereal (#71)
• Copy as Markdown Link, in a tab's right-click menu beside Copy Address and in the Tabs menu: [title](address), ready to paste into a note, a message or a pull request. (#81) Thanks @merttopuz (#82)
• The video you're watching can float when you switch to another app, as in Arc, and go back into its tab when you return to it. Settings › General › Float the video when you switch apps, off by default. Only from the sites a video floats from on its own when you leave its tab; one floated with ⌘⇧P stays out. Thanks @farchanrifai (#152)
• A mouse's back and forward side buttons navigate the page, the way the trackpad's two-finger swipe already does. Thanks @reloadedhead (#79)
• Flick the floating video to a corner, as in Arc and Dia: two fingers on the window send it to the corner or edge they point at, on a short spring, instead of pushing it along. Settings › General › Flick the floating video to a corner, off by default. Dragging still puts it anywhere. Thanks @farchanrifai (#151)
• Spaces with the tabs across the top: two fingers up or down over the bar, or a notch of a mouse wheel, bring the next space's tabs in as these go; past the last, a new space is made right in the bar. "New Space…" makes it in place in the column too.
• Reopen Closed Tab is in the right-click menu of every tab, in the row and in the column, beside Close Other Tabs; it was only on ⌘⇧T and in the History menu. Thanks @andupoto for asking
• Extensions on private tabs, if you allow them: Settings › Extensions › Allow on private tabs, off by default. It applies to private tabs opened after it is turned on. Thanks @merttopuz (#55)
• Scroll with the middle button, as on Windows: click the wheel on a page, then move the mouse up or down; another click stops it. Settings › General › Scroll with the middle button.
• Homebrew: brew install --cask driceroland/tap/search, and brew upgrade brings each new version.
• ⌘S folds the tab bar away in its layout across the top too, as it folds the column: the page takes the whole height, and the bar comes back down over it when the pointer rests against the top edge. The View menu says Hide Tab Bar there.
• Where a link goes, before you click it: point at it and its address shows at the bottom of the page, in the other corner if the pointer is in that one. Settings › General › Show where links go, off by default. Thanks @fschrhunt (#29)

Fixed

• A page on this Mac opens: an .html or .xhtml file double-clicked in the Finder, once Search is the Mac's browser, opened Search and nothing else. It now comes up in a tab, with the files beside it it asks for.
• Gmail's download button downloads the attachment again, a PDF included: a file the server sends as an attachment is now always saved, as in Safari and Chrome, where Search showed it instead whenever WebKit could — out of sight, in the hidden frame Gmail loads it into, so the button seemed to do nothing.
• Right-click on a picture works again in a tab you had followed a link out of: closing or putting to sleep the tab the link opened took Search's page scripts away from the first one, so the right-click menu on an image (X's photos, for one) showed nothing at all, and saved passwords, the swipe back and hidden elements stopped answering there too.
• The back and forward buttons of a Logitech mouse set up in Logi Options+ (an MX Master among them) navigate the page: Options+ sends them as a swipe, not as mouse buttons, and Search only listened for the buttons. Thanks @ductan2 (#169)
• Pages no longer see anything of Search that Safari doesn't show them. They could see the messages Search's own scripts send to the app (window.webkit, which Safari never exposes) and the variables those scripts kept: the mark of an app's embedded web view rather than a browser, which Google answered with a CAPTCHA every few searches, and some sign-ins with "This browser or app may not be secure". Search's scripts now run in a world of their own beside the page, out of its sight; 1.0.1 also claimed Safari 26.5 on every Mac, where it now names the Safari the Mac has. (#26)
• Going back or forward with two fingers on the trackpad takes a shorter swipe (70 points instead of 110), and a quick flick is enough, as in Safari. Thanks @mihsanbudiman for the report
• Scrolling is smoother: while a page scrolled, the fill that shows how far you have read in its tab was redrawn at every frame — up to 120 times a second, taking a third of a core from the thread that puts the scrolled page on screen. It now moves in hundredths, only when that changes. Thanks @e30klip and @mihsanbudiman for the reports
• A tab you drag to another place keeps up with the pointer: each move of the hand used to redraw the whole column or bar, the neighbouring spaces' tabs included, and the tab trailed behind. Now only the tab being carried moves until it changes place. Thanks @e30klip for the report
• With a password manager that handles passkeys — 1Password, Bitwarden, Proton Pass — what it hands back to the browser now reaches Search's passkeys. Their scripts in the page ran before Search's and kept hold of WebKit's own passkey function: a site asking for a passkey under its sign-in field left a request open with macOS that way, and Search quitting meanwhile could jam every passkey after it until the Mac restarted. Search's passkey patch now runs first, ahead of them.
• A page gets the shortcuts it uses before Search does, as in Chrome: ⌘K in Slack, ⌘F in a Google Doc, ⌘S in an editor. Search acts only if the page leaves the key unused. The keys that open, close and switch tabs (⌘T, ⌘W, ⌘⇧T, ⌘⇧N, ⌘1–⌘9, ⌘⇧[ and ⌘⇧]) stay Search's, and the menus are unchanged. Thanks @AbhiPanseriya for the report. Refs #147
• The list under the address field keeps up with a paste or a keystroke: its rows change at once instead of sliding into place on a spring, it comes and goes with a short fade, and the field steps aside quickly once Return is pressed. Thanks @andupoto for the report
• Spaces across the top go one at a time: a spin of the mouse wheel, or a stroke that follows another too soon, no longer runs through several of them, and a little scrolling with the pointer high on the page no longer changes space. The space's icon turns over the way the tabs go, up for the next space and down going back, where it slid sideways.
• Hiding or showing the sidebar, or the tab bar across the top, no longer judders along the right of the window: the page slides with them and is laid out once at its new size, instead of on every frame of the slide — which also let it overshoot the window for a moment. Thanks @infomiho for the report
• Session Buddy opens when its button is pressed. It listens at start for a window changing size, which Chrome reports and WebKit doesn't, and gave up there before listening for its button; Search now offers that event too. Thanks @andupoto for the report
• ⌘⇧V in a text field pastes without formatting, as it does in Chrome — in a Google Doc too, and in a box inside another site's frame. Away from a text field it is still Paste and Go. About lists it as Paste and go. (#138) Thanks @Aaditya2605 (#144)
• A floating panel no longer loses the cursor over a page that hides it: the six sheets in App.swift — Settings, History, Downloads, Bookmarks, Welcome, Passwords — now own an arrow cursor rect of their own, so a page's cursor: none stops at the panel's edge instead of painting invisible air across the whole sheet. Thanks @0froq (#149)
• With an extension's page as the new tab, the field works again: an address or a search typed there went nowhere and the tab stayed on the extension's page. Bookmarks, history and pasting an address into that tab had the same trouble, as did any tab showing an extension's page, one it opened included. A private tab sent from an extension's page to a website stays private. Thanks @meta-boy (#42)
• Extensions: the Chrome APIs Search answers itself (history, bookmarks, downloads, the open tabs, closed tabs, top sites, browsing data, the reading list) are now held to what the extension's own manifest asked for, where the only checks before were inside the injected script that runs beside the extension's own code. Thanks @Hyp4tia (#128)
• An extension package that carries a symbolic link is refused at install, the rewriting of its pages and its background script no longer follow one, and a manifest path that points outside its own folder is left alone. Thanks @Hyp4tia (#129)
• ./bench answers only for the tabs it opened itself: a script on this Mac can no longer read, click in, or put to sleep a tab you are using. Thanks @Hyp4tia (#130)
• A right-click on an image offers Search's own menu to open, copy or download it only when its address is http, https, data or blob; for any other address a page names, WebKit's own menu shows instead. Thanks @Hyp4tia (#131)
• An extension's sign-in is finished only by the tab it began in, or a window that tab opened; another page that goes to an address shaped like the sign-in's answer is no longer handed to the extension as that answer. Thanks @Hyp4tia (#132)
• An extension's popup opens at its size, the one it had last time, where it came in as a sliver and grew into place. Thanks @nicostassart (#48)
• A new tab opened from a private tab is private too: ⌘T, ⌘-click on a link, ⌘D, Open Image in New Tab, and a bookmark opened with ⌘ used to open an ordinary tab, which kept the page in the history. A link or duplicate stays signed in to what the private tab was (#121) Thanks @PeterTheMango (#122)
• Pages are told the Safari version this Mac has, not a fixed Safari 26.5: on an older macOS, a site trusting that number could send code its WebKit can't run. Thanks @peter-bf (#110)
• Passwords, Bookmarks and the welcome screen find the browsers to bring things over from without walking through their caches: a few milliseconds instead of twenty, each time those lists are drawn. Thanks @dttdrv (#156)
• The first launch, the one with the welcome screen, puts its window up about 50 ms sooner: the browsers to bring things over from are looked for when that page is reached, not while the window is being built. Thanks @dttdrv (#155)
• Search can be chosen as the default web browser. macOS only lists an app there when it claims XHTML pages as well as HTML pages; Search claimed HTML, http, and https, and so never appeared in Desktop & Dock → Default web browser. Thanks @Aaditya2605 (#140)
• Sites whose redirects carry a binary content type — youtube.com sends application/binary on its move to www.youtube.com — are followed to their destination instead of being downloaded as a file. Thanks @danielferrazs (#124)
• Esc puts away Downloads, as it does History and every other panel. Thanks @shashwataggarwal (#80)
• A tab's title in the column runs to the end of its row, where it stopped short to leave room for a cross that only shows under the pointer; under the pointer, the title fades out beneath the cross. (#84) Thanks @caisergan (#109)
• An extension's button closes its popup when pressed a second time, as in Chrome, instead of opening it again. Thanks @iuri1911 (#137)
• 1Password works: signing in to it in the browser adds your account and unlocks it, and its menu offers your logins on Google and every other site. Once a sign-in succeeded the extension froze for good, its popup included, and the account was never added: WebKit hangs an extension's worker that opens a WebSocket, and 1Password opens one right then. An extension's worker now gets its sockets from Search. The tab 1Password then sends to its own page goes there too, where it stayed on a spinner. To unlock with the 1Password app instead, add Search in 1Password › Settings › Browser › Add Browser. Thanks @iuri1911 (#126)
• Passkeys saved in 1Password work, GitHub's two-factor sign-in included, on the first try. Where Search can't offer the Mac's own passkeys, it hid the passkey object from every page, and sites said passkeys weren't supported, 1Password's included; now it is there whenever an extension answers passkey requests itself. And a message an extension's worker sends to a tab now reaches the extension's own frames in it, as in Chrome: 1Password's banner never heard it should offer the passkey, and the site's request failed until the page was reloaded. Thanks @iuri1911 (#126)
• Bitwarden, and any extension that keeps things in an offscreen document: each save there took ten seconds, and one made just before could be lost — enough to get in the way of signing in. Extensions can also find their own popup, background and offscreen document (runtime.getContexts).
• Proton Pass finds sign-in forms again, and offers its logins in them: its form detection waits for requestIdleCallback, which WebKit doesn't have (it was taken out after a page-load regression, bug 287681), and stopped there. Search supplies one to extensions. The object a password manager hooks for passkeys is also kept, so its hooks don't vanish when WebKit makes a new one. Thanks @ChloeVPin (#146)
• The floating video window opens where you last left it, at the size you left it, instead of back in the bottom-right corner each time; if that spot is no longer on a screen, it starts in the corner as before. (#123) Thanks @farchanrifai (#150)
• The stand-in traffic lights drawn while Search is in the background are no longer redrawn each time the window changes screen or size, only when they move.
• An empty tab no longer works the processor while it waits: the slow breath under the address field was redrawn by the app every frame, about a sixth of a core with nothing happening. The same breath now runs in macOS's own animation layer, at no cost to Search.
• With extensions installed, the window no longer waits for them: they load once it is up. The first launch after an update, when Search fits its Chrome compatibility layer to each extension again, does that away from the main thread — with Grammarly, the window had stood still for half a second. Thanks @andupoto for the report
• Search opens faster when you have many bookmarks: the Bookmarks menu used to be built in full, every folder included, before the window could appear — about a quarter of a second for 1,500 bookmarks, at every launch. Its bookmarks are now put in as the menu opens, a folder's as that folder opens. Thanks @andupoto for the report
• Before macOS 15.4, where Search can't run extensions, the Chrome Web Store no longer shows an "Add to Search" button that did nothing when pressed; Settings › Extensions says what they need. Thanks @andupoto for the report
• Started hidden — open -j, or anything that launches Search in the background — Search comes up with its window, hidden with it until shown, where it could come up with no window at all.
• A new tab starts loading the moment you press Return or pick a bookmark. Each new tab used to start its web process from cold first — about 40 to 60 milliseconds with the window stuck — where it now takes about 10. Thanks @andupoto for the report
• A bookmark picked from the list under its button closes the list as its page starts, instead of leaving it open over the page. Thanks @andupoto for the report
• A link pasted into the address field shows at once. Every key and every paste sorted the whole history again for the History menu, and cut every address in it into pieces to find its host, before the field could catch up. Thanks @andupoto for the report
• Passkeys work: a site's "Sign in with a passkey" or "Create a passkey" brings up your Mac's own passkey sheet — Touch ID with your passkeys from iCloud Keychain or a password app, your iPhone over the QR code, or a security key — where it could end in "authentication failed" on every site. Left to WebKit, a sign-in page that offers your passkey under its name field kept a request open with macOS, and if Search quit or crashed while such a page was open, macOS went on refusing all of Search's passkeys until the Mac restarted. Search now carries passkeys out itself, as Chrome does, and never leaves one open; the first time, macOS asks whether Search may use them. Passkeys still failing after the update? Restart your Mac once. Not yet: the Mac's passkeys offered under a sign-in field as the page loads — the site's passkey button is the way in for now; a password manager extension that keeps passkeys, such as 1Password, can offer its own there. (#17)
• ⌘⇧N no longer piles up empty private tabs: one already open comes to the end of the row, as with ⌘T.
• A new space's choice of sign-ins reads in full in the column ("Signed in" / "Signed out"), where it was cut short.
• A saved password is offered only on its own site: one kept for alice.github.io is no longer offered on another github.io, herokuapp.com, blogspot.com or other shared-hosting site, and one kept for a network address such as 192.168.1.1 no longer on 10.0.1.1. Sites are told apart with the public suffix list macOS keeps, as for passkeys. Thanks @karadoganyi (#163)
• A hidden sidebar comes out every time the pointer reaches the left edge, and goes when the pointer leaves it. Brought out and put away quickly a few times, it could stay out after the pointer had gone, or not come out at all until the pointer left the edge and came back; the same for the tab bar folded away across the top. It now follows where the pointer is, even with another app in front. (#114) Thanks @caisergan (#115)
• A column of tabs long enough to scroll no longer draws its scroll bar over the cross on the tab under the pointer, where one was taken for the other: it sits in the margin beside them instead. (#83) Thanks @caisergan (#99)
• Search with… on selected text opens the search in a new tab in Search, with the engine chosen in Settings › General, instead of handing it to the Mac's default browser. From a private tab, the search opens in a private tab. Text selected in a text field, or in a frame of the same site, is searched too. (#66) Thanks @karadoganyi (#73)