Apple’s latest iOS and macOS betas undo some of Safari’s controversial new design

Apple has released its third developer beta for the upcoming iOS 15 and macOS Monterey, and they’re making much-needed fixes to Safari, namely rolling back some of the more controversial changes introduced in previous beta releases. For macOS, this means a normal tab bar that reverts to the previous design, while iOS gets a more consistent design when it comes to the URL bar.

iOS 15 still sticks to its new tab view and the URL bar moved to the bottom of the screen, but the latest beta has it permanently docked, instead of bouncing it off the top of the screen. screen when you select it. Apple also added a new refresh option to the context menu when you press and hold the URL bar. Together the changes help to make the new design much more consistent to use.

Switching to macOS is simpler: Apple appears to have brought back some of its Big Sur design for the URL bar and tabs from Safari, ditching the combined tab / URL bar setup it launched in beta versions. previous ones. In the latest beta, there is again a URL bar that sits at the top of every Safari menu, with a row of tabs below.

Each of those tabs still take up a large chunk of real estate – Monterey’s overall design is the same in that regard – but it’s certainly an improvement over the original beta versions. That said, if you prefer the new design, that’s still an option too, depending on 9to5Mac.

The iPadOS version of Safari hasn’t changed, at least for now. Since Apple isn’t expected to fully release its latest operating system updates until the fall, there is still plenty of time to make additional changes to Safari on all of Apple’s platforms.