Safari gets another design tweak in macOS Monterey beta 10 and iPadOS 15.1 beta 4

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In the latest macOS Monterey beta 10 and iPadOS 15.1 beta 4 releases, Apple has made another minor design tweak to Safari.  The Favorites Bar, which was previously moved to appear below the tabs, has been moved back to its position above the tabs.

The change has been applied to both macOS Monterey beta 10, as well as iPadOS 15.1 beta 4 updates. This change only appears when tabs are configured to appear in the ‘Separate’ view, rather than the new and much-loathed ‘Compact’ tabs view.

Safari bookmark

Apple is not done with fixing Safari yet

Jason Snell was one of the first people to note this new change:

While it is a welcome change that Apple is still fixing Safari, the new Safari changes have become a classic case study of ‘don’t fix it if it’s not broken’. You can see our previous coverage to get a reminder of what the new Safari design changes were.

Not all is bad with the new Safari update, which is already available publically for macOS Big Sur and macOS Catalina users. There are new privacy protection improvements, HTTPS upgrade, tab groups, web extensions support, WebM audio, and more. Apple had even enabled end-to-end encryption for iCloud Safari bookmarks but dropped it a few weeks later.

Despite the changes, the tabs are still not perfect in the new Safari update, even when you revert to the older ‘Separate’ view. They make it difficult to discern which is the active tab. The situation is so bad that a third-party developer actually made an extension called ActiveTab that lets users easily see which tab is active. The extension is available for $1.99 in the Mac App Store.

Ironically, the macOS Monterey webpage on Apple’s website still shows off the new tabs interface, which very few users like.

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