Developer brings Snow Leopard’s Safari back from the dead, and it works on macOS Monterey

Apple’s response to the Safari compact tabs controversy involves decoupling the tab bar from the URL bar. But one developer took the matter into his own hands, making Safari 5 from OS X Snow Leopard available to use on any macOS version—including the macOS Monterey beta.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

  • A developer has recreated Snow Leopard’s Safari 5 in SwiftUI
  • You can install it on Big Sur and even the Monterey beta
  • You’d use it if you hated Monterey’s Safari 15 redesign

Safari 5, perfectly recreated in SwiftUI

Developer Zane Kleinberg took it upon himself to recreate Safari 5, which was bundled with OS X Snow Leopard, for modern macOS versions like macOS Big Sur.

It can even be installed on the current macOS Monterey beta. Given the hole Apple dug itself into with the Safari 15 redesign across iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey, there could be a market out there for Safari 5.

We were thoroughly impressed with Zane’s work.

Not only was he able to recreate Safari 5’s interface to the tiniest detail, including the gradient window chrome, but also implement full browsing functionality. With Zane’s Safari 5, you can browse webpages, add ones you’d like to keep to your bookmarks, search the web with via a dedicated search bar and so forth.

Among other advanced things, SwiftUI lets developers create user interfaces programatically rather than design them in Apple’s visual editor.

To take Safari 5 for a spin, download it from Zane’s Github page.