macOS Monterey Beta 3: Apple redesigns the interface of the Safari tab following complaints

In the third beta of macOS Monterey, released this morning, Apple overhauled Safari’s design, making the tab bar more similar to macOS Big Sur’s current tab bar.

Safari’s previous design did away with the dedicated URL and search interface, instead allowing any individual tab to be used for browsing input. Tabs were also all arranged at the top of the screen to minimize the space occupied at the top of a Safari window.

In ‌macOS Monterey‌, Apple backtracked. There is a dedicated URL / search bar at the top of the Safari window, with the tabs arranged below. Clicking on a tab makes it the active window, and it’s easier to drag tabs to rearrange them or open them in a new window.

This is still quite a far cry from the current Safari design in macOS Big Sur‌, but it is certainly an improvement over the original design of ‌macOS Monterey‌.

The new, separate tab bar is enabled by default when upgrading to ‌macOS Monterey‌ beta three, but Apple has included an option to revert to the original Monterey design. If you go to View and turn off “Show Separate Tab Bar”, you can use the original design.

‌MacOS Monterey‌ beta 3 also seems to lay the foundation for Universal Control. Under System Preferences -> Displays -> Add Display -> Advanced, preferences can now be selected for the universal control feature.

Unfortunately, Universal Control is not functional and we will have to wait for a later beta version to discover a working version.