Introduction

Safari is a free web browser from Apple. It comes pre-installed with all Apple computers, making it a popular browser for many users. It also uses significantly less power and memory than other browsers, which means it won't drain your battery as quickly if you're using it on a laptop.

In this lesson, we'll talk about how to access and use Safari .

Safari is not available for Windows . To learn about different Windows browsers, read our Choosing a Web Browser lesson.

Accessing Safari

• Safari should be located on your Mac's dock by default. Whenever you want to open Safari , simply click the icon on the dock.
  
• If the Safari icon is not on your dock, you can also open it from Launchpad.

  

If you want to use Safari as your main web browser, you can set it as your default browser . Review our lesson on Customizing Safari to learn how.

Getting to know Safari

Safari offers many of the same features as most web browsers. While it is fairly simple to use, you'll need to spend some time becoming familiar with some of its features.

Click the buttons in the interactive below to learn more about using Safari.

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Share Button

Click here to add bookmarks , add sites to your Reading List , and share links with others.

Sidebar Button

Click here to show or hide the sidebar . From the s idebar , you can view bookmarks , items on your Reading List , and shared links .

Smart Search Field

You'll use the Smart Search field to navigate to different websites and conduct online searches. Simply enter the URL or search term, then press Enter .

Navigation Buttons

The Back and Forward buttons allow you to move among sites you've recently visited.

New Tab Button

Safari allows you to view multiple websites in the same window using tabs . Click the New Tab button to open a new tab .

Show All Tabs Button

Click the Show All Tabs button to see thumbnails of all of the tabs you currently have open.

Safari for mobile devices

This tutorial will focus on Safari for desktop and laptop computers . However, if you have an iPhone or iPad, a mobile version of Safari will be the default browser. To learn more about the mobile version, review our lesson on Browsing with Safari .