With so many web browser options which one should you use? There have been a few big updates with the launch of Windows 10 and the new Microsoft Edge browser. The Mac side has also seen an update with El Capitan. Today I am going to list the top 10 web browsers for mac and windows. I will also test few of them to get the best browser among them.
Filmora Video Editor. Filmora Video Editor is the flagship video editing software for Mac. With OS X El Capitan, the best browser for your Mac brings new tools for better surfing. Now Safari lets you keep favourite websites open and accessible with Pinned Sites. You can quickly mute audio without hunting for the tab it’s coming from. And use AirPlay to stream video from a web page to your HDTV.
Before we start:
I want to give a short intro about the web browsers that how many types of browsers are there and what are their objectives. Web browsers are basically the program/software installed on your pc, smartphone, mac and other devices to access the internet. Without them browsing internet on these devices is not possible. For example, currently you must be using any browser to read this post on our website Revkid.com. When you will go through different pages on our site or on any web, this will be called as “Web browsing” or “Web surfing”.
So lets start listing the 10 best internet browsers for mac.
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Top 10 web browsers for mac and windows
Safari Browser
Safari browser for mac comes as default web browser. It is official browser so it is compatible with most of the services. With the passage of time, Apple has improved the features and quality of service for this browser. That’s the reason this browser is drastically fast. Now if we analyze it with user interface point of view, it also outclass some of its competitors. The browsing feels so pleasurable with its clean grey UI and unique styling of components like menu etc. Apple fans found this as best mac browser because of its pleasant visuals and well balanced performance.
- Pros: Syncing across devices, offline reading list, iCloud tabs And smart search.
- Cons: Lack of developer tools features, bookmarks and email features are not user friendly.
Chrome Browser
Google chrome is one of the best alternative web browsers for mac. This is because of the demon speeds of it. Although it is not as fit and balanced as safari but it can done all the task with the same or more power. With latest update of it, Google have introduced quite new unique features. It offers a lot of customization and is user friendly as well. It have a lot of add-ons available to download and integrate. Specially developers love this browser because of its so much variety in developer tools option. It is best browser for mac 10.6.8, if still you’re on old mac.
- Pros: Smart syncing, voice over support, improved Javascript performance, speed master and wide developer support.
- Cons: Less attractive UI as compared to safari
Firefox Browser
Firefox browser is the open source web browser available for different platforms. When it comes to mac os x, it competes head to head with chrome to become the best among different web browsers for mac. The main reason is that both are liked by developers because of their add-ons and extensions. Its social API is gem for web developers. It is also a rich user customization supported browser. Overall this browser is suitable for daily browsing and downloading.
- Pros: Full screen support, Unique tools for developers, encryption and security.
- Cons: Not as fast as chrome or safari, despite of having clean ui, missing that X factor in user experience.
Opera Browser
Although this browser is not as well known as other browsers discussed above but it really makes a difference in the currently available free web browsers for mac. Opera browser is a tremendous browser that offers some unique features that its competitors still lacks. The compression of pages for slow internet connections is probably the most liked feature among its user base. Similar to chrome and firefox, it also have wide range of add-ons and extensions. With the fast rendering and compression, its loading speed is unimaginable.
- Pros: Attractive user interface with a lot of unique features, innovative and off road mode.
- Cons: Unneeded features, system of bookmarking is different from other browsers and sync issues sometimes.
OmniWeb Browser
With all those giants present there, omniweb browser is still going strong and have its own decent fan base. This browser has taken the user customization to a whole new level. User can change the whole UI of the website on his/her side. It comes with built-in adblocker to block the ads. Like opera, it also renders the web pages at background to load them faster. It also offers security to its users and plugins are also available there to download.
- Pros: High user customization and user friendly, background rendering and simple UI.
- Cons: Low search functions and less availability of features.
Torch Browser
Torch browser is actually a chromium project based browser for mac. So it have all the features that are being offered by chrome. The additional features which this browser offers are torrent support, social side bar, emojis, video downloads, torch music and a lot of other features too. As I said earlier that it have all the features of chrome so same goes for the extensions and developer tools. The loading of web pages and user experience is also a noticeable feature.
- Pros: Chrome based with all the features, extendable support for extensions and cool extra features.
- Cons: A bit less attractive ui and some unneeded features.
RocketMelt Browser
Best Web Browser For Mac 10.9.5
RocketMelt is a browser that facebook addicts and marketers liked a lot. It does same things what other browsers do. The facebook integration feature is the thing which makes it special. To use this browser with full core, just connect it with facebook account and then grant it permissions. Now all the features of facebook will be on your fingertips and you will not need to visit it again. It is based on chrome, so all the extensions and apps works with it.
- Pros: Full social network integration, chrome based with all the core features working.
- Cons: User interface is not good as compared to other browsers and a bit slow.
Maxthon Browser
Maxthon is yet another great replacement for safari browser. It is a new age browser and have some serious features. It follows all the guidelines which makes it a featured browser. It sets the user free with its new cloud technology which let anyone sync and manage across different platforms. It also provide a full screen option which most mac users search for in browsers. On the UI side, it also features a minimal and well managed user friendly interface. It is currently a great competitor for mainstream free mac web browsers.
- Pros: Beautiful and minimal skin, Cloud push feature and quick loading of pages.
- Cons: A bit heavy and less support for developers.
Best Web Browser For Mac El Capitan Download
Cruz Browser
Cruz is a unique browser that offers unique features on mac. It allows users to integrate fully twitter so we can say it as a social browser. It offers brilliant plugins and features with user customization on board. One of its plugin, browsa enables users to view web pages in split view sidebar. Extended availability of AppleScript commands makes it more unique. It also offers powerful user style and user script functions. It also supports customizable url shortcuts. It is surely one of the best performing social browsers compatible with mac.
- Pros: Mac styled UI, powerful UserScript and extended AppleScript commands.
- Cons: Less supported extensions and tools for web developers.
SlimBoat Browser
It is solid browser that deserves to be the alternative of browsers for mac. The slimboat browser have a basic design but the level of security is commendable. The lightness and quickness is the first benefit of it. It is a well designed browser with all the options available at front to improve user experience. It renders the web pages well so that they can be loaded faster. Other noticeable features includes built-in ad blocker, popup blocker, organizing sites in groups and easy sharing.
- Pros: Ultra simple UI, download youtube videos easily and lightest.
- Cons: Too much basic design and very low add-ons support.
Now:
As I have already listed the best free browsers for mac above, its time for testing and finding the best mac web browser.
Best Web Browser For Mac And Windows
So to test I’m using a 2015 13 inch MacBook Pro that’s dual booting both OS X and Windows. It’s specs out with a dual core Core i7 processor, integrated Iris graphics, sixteen gigs of memory and a fast SSD.
The first test is Peacekeeper which is a good general test of a browser’s performance. On the Windows side, Mozilla Firefox does well with Microsoft Edge falling a bit behind. Move over to OS X and you’ll see Safari puts in an impressive showing with Firefox still doing well.
Next up is Octane benchmark tool which is more of a pure Java script speed test. Things are very even on Windows 10 with Google Chrome, Edge and Opera in a dead heat and Firefox coming slightly behind. On Mac interestingly Safari drops back quite a bit where Chrome and Opera continue to do well.
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Moving on is the HTML5 test, this measures how each browser supports the various features of the internet. Chrome and Opera pull this one out which isn’t a huge surprise since Opera is based on Chromium where both Edge and Safari fall quite a bit behind. Another interesting test is Browser scope security which checks how many major threats each browser can block. Again Opera and Chrome pull out the win here with Microsoft Edge coming in right behind.
A slightly different test is the Unity WebGL benchmark, this is all about measuring how well each browser handles more intense games. On Windows Firefox pulls out an impressive win here over the rest of the field and on Mac it’s a similar story although Safari does respectably well too.
For a more real world test, I timed how long it took for each browser to open and load the Google homepage. Here Microsoft Edge gets a big leg up on everything else with Chrome coming in a bit behind and on OS X Chrome and Firefox are the quickest but all four browsers do well. The amount of memory a browser uses makes a difference especially on less powerful computers. So here I loaded each with eight tabs and checked how much RAM they needed. On Windows 10 Firefox is the most lightweight with Opera and Chrome coming in a bit behind. Things are surprisingly close on El Capitan, Safari pulls out a slight edge but all four are close enough to not make a huge difference. So when you put it all together which browser should you go for? On Windows Chrome is the best all around choice, it performs well and doesn’t have any major flaws. For Mac it’s a toss up between Chrome and Safari, Chrome tends to perform better but Safari is more optimized.
So what browser do you guys prefer? Let me know in the comments below. Don’t forget to share this post on social media platforms, it helps us to write more authentic articles. Also you can visit our reviews category to checkout the most honest and premium quality analysis. Be sure to subscribe the newsletter when the widget pops up. Thank You for reading.