User Experience: Chrome vs Safari
Replacing Internet Explorer in 2012 as the most popular desktop browser, Chrome has dominated the market for 10 years. Even if mobiles and tablets are taken into account, Chrome is still about 45% ahead of the second runner-up, Safari. Aside from the factors such as speed and ecosystem, we are wondering whether user experience contributes to Chrome’s success. Therefore, we are analysing and comparing the UX of Chrome and Safari. Read on to find out what we, as a UX company, think!
Homepage
Chrome and Safari both hold a large user base. Whilst they share many similarities in terms of functionality and features, there are some key differences in the user experience they offer. Let’s start from the Homepage.
Desktop
In general, both Chrome and Safari have a user interface with tabs, a search bar and bookmarks. A huge difference is that Chrome has a more minimalistic interface with fewer buttons and options visible whilst Safari has a busier page that shows Frequently Visited, Privacy Report etc. Yet minimalistic doesn’t mean insufficient. With the bookmark bar, Chrome actually allows users to access more bookmarks at once and even categorise them in folders for better organisation. Besides, it is more intuitive to open a new tab on Chrome than on Safari as users can find the ‘+’ sign right next to the existing tabs. Our UX consultant Lauren Nicholson gave another point to Chrome due to the fact that it allows users to switch between user profiles to keep the preferences, bookmarks and search history separate between multiple users on the same device.
Mobile
On the other hand, both Chrome and Safari have busy Homepages on mobile, leaving little white space, but Chrome seems more efficient with most of the real estate, fitting in more links and information than Safari. One thing Safari is doing better though is that it allows users to click and begin typing without needing to reach or stretch since the search bar is placed at the bottom, whereas Chrome places its search bar towards the middle of the screen.
Something that is also worth mentioning is that Safari provides a tab overview on both desktop and mobile. Chrome provides that on mobile only, but it comes with a page for Recent Tabs which allows users to see all recent tabs on different devices.
Search Bar
When it comes to the search bar, both Chrome and Safari offer keyword suggestions as users are typing, but Safari goes one step further by recommending Siri Suggested Website. The website that Siri thinks is useful to users would appear above the keywords suggested by the Google search engine.
Search Result Page
The layouts of the Search Result Page are very similar on Chrome and Safari. However, when users want to add a bookmark, Chrome has an easier route — clicking the star at the end of the address bar (in the upper right corner). Safari requires users to go to Share and click Add Bookmark, which is still short and easy but compared with Chrome’s one-click journey, it’s one step more.
As pointed out on the Homepage, Safari’s placement of the search bar is more user-friendly as it’s at the bottom of the screen, reachable with users’ thumbs. Safari applies the practice to the Search Result Page too so it’s very consistent throughout, whereas Chrome moves the bar to the top of the screen, which is a far stretch and a different position from its Homepage. One possible reason is that Chrome wants to create a similar layout to the desktop version that it assumes its users are familiar with.
It is true that Chrome has some noteworthy good UX designs, but there is no denying that Safari has some great features too. Overall, the choice between Chrome and Safari largely comes down to personal preference and specific use cases. Inevitably Chrome integrates better with the Google search engine and it’s more intuitive and designed for multiple devices, whilst Safari is more privacy-focused and optimized for Apple users.
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