I’ve been playing around with Safari’s “Compact” tab layout and… I kinda like it
Hear me out! I know this is a controversial subject. (And for good reason.)
Time flies, and so in part this seems like ancient history already, but during last year’s beta cycle, the big controversy was around to changes to Safari across macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Here I’m going to focus almost entirely on Safari for macOS. You can see in the screenshot above from Apple’s press release from WWDC 2021 that Apple envisioned a pretty radical redesign of Safari. Here’s what they said about it at the time:
Already the world’s fastest browser, Safari now reimagines the browsing experience with a new tab design that lets users see more of the page as they scroll. A new tab bar takes on the color of the webpage and combines tabs, the tool bar, and the search field into a single compact design.
Essentially they squashed the address bar and the tab bar into a single toolbar. Tabs no longer looked like physical tabs like you’d see in an office supply cabinet, but instead looked more like buttons. The active tab housed the address bar. The intent was to blend the the window chrome with the web page itself. To further facilitate that, Safari would pick up the dominant color of the webpage and extend it up to the top of the window.
Here’s a couple of examples of what this looks like. First, Daring Fireball:
Next, Sports Illustrated:
To say that people had strong feelings about these changes would be a dramatic understatement. This was met with a lot of vocal criticism, including from publications and personalities with big audiences within the Apple space. I myself pretty quickly switched back to the old tab layout, which Apple now designates “Separate.” I often joke that I still use macOS in the same way that I did twenty years ago, meaning I don’t tend to adopt a lot of new features that Apple adds in.
Apple continued to make changes to the Compact tab layout throughout the macOS Monterey betas as last Summer wore on, but the negative feedback from the community continued. Eventually Apple waived the white flag. The Compact layout became an optional mode, not the default. While a screenshot of the Compact layout was still present at the top of Apple’s press release announcing the release of Monterey in late October of last year, it was much less emphasized, and the marketing copy was updated to reflect the retreat:
Safari comes with new ways to experience the web, including a new optional compact tab bar design that gives users more space to browse, integration with Shared with You so users can easily access links sent from Messages, and support for Quick Note makes it easy to keep track of information discovered on websites.
The Compact layout was just briefly mentioned in a sentence that actually has more to do with other Monterey features. In fact, right below the paragraph I pulled this from is a screenshot of Safari using the traditional tab layout. The furor was abated, and people mostly moved on. I had honestly forgotten about the new tab design entirely until recently when I talked to someone who not only uses Compact mode, but loves it. So a few days ago I decided to try it out for the first time in over a year and… I don’t hate it.
Before I go any further I’m not here to try to talk you into using the Compact layout, or to dismiss any of the valid criticisms levied against it last year. It’s a dramatic change that I do think results in a minimal look that may or may not resonate with you, but from a user experience I think the traditional layout is far more approachable. No one’s going to be confused by a separate tab bar and address bar, whereas it takes a minute to grok exactly what’s going on with Compact mode.
Still, having played with it for a few days I think that minimal look really does resonate with me, and I personally love the way Compact mode gives the appearance of the website extending up into the window chrome, though I also completely understand why many are repelled by that. (And sometimes it doesn’t work so well and the window chrome color doesn’t quite match the website.)
Change is not always positive, and sometimes the old ways are the best. But I honestly like that Apple a) took a chance with changing up fundamental browser design and b) left the feature in as a setting you can enable if you want to. All these months later, I wonder how many people within Apple use Compact mode. I’d bet heavily the traditional layout is by far the most-used within Apple, but I’d be curious to know which Apple execs, if any use Compact.
I’d love to hear your feedback on this. Do you use Compact mode? If so, what do you love about it? If, like me, you forgot it was even in there, give it a shot and let me know what you think after a few days.