Apple publishes Switch to Safari page pitching speed, battery and privacy over Chrome

Apple openly courts Chrome users

Apple has posted a page titled Switch to Safari that makes a head-on case for abandoning Chrome, arguing that Safari wins on speed, battery life and privacy. The page reached the Hacker News front page on 14 October 2026, so the pitch is landing in front of developers and other technically minded readers, not just casual ones.

The performance claims

According to Apple, Safari on the Mac loads frequently visited websites up to 35% faster than Chrome, and streams up to five hours more video on a single battery charge. Both figures appear on the page with footnote markers, though the page itself does not spell out the test methodology. The numbers are Apple's own and have not been independently verified.

Privacy at the centre of the argument

Privacy is the sharpest-edged claim. Apple states that Safari blocks third-party cookies by default and uses a system called Intelligent Tracking Prevention to stop companies from building profiles of browsing activity. Chrome, Apple contends, does not block third-party cookies by default, letting them follow users across the web and feed data to advertisers. That framing leans on Google's long-running difficulty in settling how, or whether, to phase out third-party cookies in its own browser.

Security gets its own treatment. Apple says Safari flags suspicious websites and prevents them from loading, runs each page in a separate process so harmful code stays confined to a single tab instead of crashing the whole application or reaching user data, and upgrades HTTP connections to HTTPS automatically. Saved passwords autofill with Touch ID or Face ID, and Apple notifies users when their credentials appear in a third-party data leak.

Lowering the cost of switching

Much of the page tackles inertia rather than persuasion. On the Mac, Safari can import bookmarks and saved passwords from Chrome automatically the first time it is used, or manually later. On iPhone, the import happens in the Settings app. Tabs, history and bookmarks sync across Apple devices through iCloud Tabs, and an iCloud for Windows extension can carry bookmarks from another browser into Safari on Apple hardware.

Apple also preempts the most common objection to leaving Chrome: dependence on Google's apps. The company says Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and other Google Workspace apps work with real-time creation, editing and collaboration in Safari, with no second browser required. Safari supports Apple Pay for checkout, and its extension ecosystem covers ad blocking, price comparison and offline reading. A feature Apple calls Describe an Extension can generate a custom Safari extension from a plain-language description of what the user wants.

Why it matters

The page follows the playbook Apple has used for years to move people from Android to iPhone: name the rival, quantify the pain, then remove the friction of leaving. That Apple now considers Chrome worth a dedicated campaign says something about browser dynamics. Chrome remains the dominant browser worldwide, while Safari's reach is largely a function of Apple's own hardware, since it ships only on macOS, iOS and iPadOS. The rivalry is also an awkward one, given that Google reportedly pays Apple billions each year to remain Safari's default search engine.

For developers, the campaign is a reminder that Safari's engine, WebKit, gates what the web can do on Apple platforms; the more users Safari holds, the more WebKit's decisions shape the web at large. For users, the concrete trade is Apple's speed and battery figures, which rest on its own benchmarks, against Chrome's cross-platform ubiquity. Whether or not the campaign moves market share, it pushes browser choice, and the privacy differences underneath it, back into mainstream conversation.