This is something that is already built into macOS Monterey on its own, but now it has arrived as an update for macOS Big Sur and macOS Catalina and confirms what I already suspected: Safari version 15.1 reverts all layout changes presented at WWDC21 and we are back to the “old” look of the browser.
A lesson that in Cupertino they have already learned twice
This means that in Cupertino they threw in the towel with all the changes they tried to make to the interface to overcome the criticisms, assuming the best thing was to go back to the interface where everything everyone was used to it. Safari 4 history repeats itself, version which attempted another drastic change by placing tabs in the window’s title bar and had the same result.
The rest of the news is still there– The groups of tabs and the customization of home tabs have not disappeared. And on the iPhone and iPad, the new design has survived, with the address bar at the bottom in iOS and unified tabs in a top bar in iPadOS. But Safari’s desktop design took a complete 180-degree turn, not taking advantage of any of the changes.
In my particular case as someone who has Safari as their default browser, what was difficult for me was that the tabs were constantly changing position. It made me waste time looking for them, unlike when they are fixed in the same place. Something that also struck me as a failure was that docked tabs were taking up a lot more space than before, drastically reducing my workspace.
Moral? The browser is an application that is widely used, intensively and for several hours a day by all users. So, changing its design greatly affects our daily life and work. After two abrupt changes that had to be totally reversed, I suspect the Cupertino designers will think about any other aesthetic changes much more carefully.
This second attempt at a complete overhaul of the WWDC21 keynote remains for history, starting at minute 1:27:45. The simplification may be missed by some, but the vast majority will appreciate that it has been removed.
