How to enable the hidden Developer menu in Safari on Mac

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to enable Safari’s Develop menu on Mac, and we’ll discuss some of the useful features that are packed within it.

Safari developer mode

Your Mac’s Safari web browser is loaded with features that aren’t enabled out of the box.

One of them is the hidden Develop menu, which packs a number of features that even regular Safari users could benefit from.

What is Safari’s Develop menu?

Safari Develop Menu Bar

Safari has a hidden menu labeled “Develop” that is typically disabled from your menu bar by default. On the other hand, it can be easily enabled by the user.

From this menu, which seems to be mostly made for web developers, you can do a variety of things related to web development, but there are also some things that I, as a regular Safari user, find useful on occasion for minor troubleshooting or other reasons.

Safari Develop Menu

The features that I think come in handy the most for me are the following:

The ability to see a web page in another web browser makes it so you can easily see why a page isn’t loading correctly for you. Although, in most cases, this is a feature a developer will use to test a website he’s building, it’s also useful for regular users who want to know if the page they’re visiting that isn’t loading properly isn’t compatible with Safari.

When it comes to emptying caches, this is a feature that comes in handy when you have a problem with a website rendering properly. You can empty your cache to make your web browser forget everything it knows about loading a specific website, and hopefully, it can render it correctly the second time around.

Lastly, the ability to disable certain features of your web browsing experience can help drastically with security, data usage, and speed. You can disable images to make a website load quicker or use less data, and you can disable JavaScript and hacks to keep your security top-notch.

There are many other options available in the menu, but I do think these are less useful to regular Safari users than those who actually do web development for a living or as a hobby.

Turn on the Develop menu in Safari

  1. Launch Safari on your Mac if it’s not already open.
  2. From the top menu bar, click Safari > Settings or Preferences.
  3. When the settings pane for Safari opens up, click Advanced from the top.
  4. Put a checkmark in the Show features for web developers or Show Develop menu in Menu Bar checkbox.
Enable 'Show features for web developers' in Safari Advanced settings

And you’re done! Now, the Develop menu will appear in the Menu Bar whenever you have Safari open on your Mac, and you can open it to reveal all of the options we talked about earlier and more.

Are you keeping the Safari Develop menu enabled on your Mac? Share in the comments!

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