Apple Switch to Safari claims 5 extra hours of Mac video

The Switch to Safari campaign rests on four promises: longer battery life, faster loading, better privacy and smarter tools. The page opens with a run of digs at Chrome, then a side-by-side comparison chart and a list of Safari features.

• Battery: up to 5 hours more video playback on a Mac than Chrome.
• Speed: up to 35% faster loading for sites you visit often.
• Tracking: Apple says Chrome allows more third-party trackers to follow you around the web and pass your data to advertisers.
• Distractions: Apple points out that Chrome can’t remember page elements you’ve chosen to hide.

The two videos each focus on one feature: Distraction Control, which lets you tap any annoying part of a page to hide it (and keeps it hidden on your next visit), and Intelligent Tracking Prevention, Apple’s system for stopping data companies from building a profile of you from your browsing.

Both of Apple’s big numbers come from its own testing, and they are narrower than they first sound. The five-hour figure applies to video streaming, not to a full day of email, spreadsheets and video calls.

The speed claim is even more specific. Apple measured load times for snapshot copies of 12 popular websites under simulated network conditions, using 15-inch MacBook Air laptops with M5 chips and 16GB of memory. That tells you Safari did well on that setup. It doesn’t promise the same gap on an older Mac, a slow coffee-shop connection or the sites you personally use every day.

None of this means Apple is wrong. Apple designs both the WebKit engine that powers Safari and the chips inside every new Mac, so it can tune one for the other in a way Google can’t. But a vendor benchmark is a starting point, not a guarantee.

Independent tests give a mixed answer. In September 2024, developer Matt Birchler ran an automated routine on a 14-inch M2 Pro MacBook Pro, cycling through YouTube, news sites, social media and Google Docs. He tested Chrome 128 against Safari 17.6 in six three-hour sessions each, 36 hours in total, with the screen at roughly 30% brightness.

Chrome came out slightly ahead. Safari drained 18.67% of the battery per session on average, while Chrome drained 17.33%, and Chrome used less power in five of the six head-to-head runs. Birchler himself warned that a different workload could flip the result.

Newer data from WattMate, a maker of battery-monitoring software, updated on October 14, 2026, looked at 374 observation windows across two Apple silicon MacBooks. On one laptop Chrome usually pulled about 2.3 watts; the other saw closer to 4.1 watts. By the firm’s modeling, closing Chrome entirely might add 24 minutes of battery on the first Mac and 142 minutes on the second. Those are modeled savings from closing Chrome, not a direct Safari test, and the company admitted a measurement issue may have pushed its wattage figures about 5% too high.

Google has its own numbers, too. In February 2023 it reported 17 hours of browsing and 18 hours of YouTube playback in Chrome on an M2 MacBook Pro. Those older results can’t be lined up neatly against Apple’s 2026 tests, which is the whole problem: every company tests the workload that flatters it.

Privacy is where Apple’s pitch is on firmer ground. Safari blocks third-party cookies by default. Those are the small files ad networks use to recognize you as you move from one website to the next. Chrome doesn’t block them out of the box, so you have to change settings yourself to get similar protection.

Apple also highlights a handful of other built-in protections:

• Passkeys, a password replacement that Apple says is end-to-end encrypted and helps guard against phishing.
• Alerts if any of your saved passwords turn up in a third-party data leak.
• Apple Pay at checkout, so the shop never sees your card number.
• Automatic upgrades from plain HTTP to the encrypted HTTPS version of a site when one exists.

Chrome has faced its own privacy complaints lately, including criticism over its automatic download of a 4GB Gemini Nano AI model onto users’ computers.

For most Mac owners who only use Apple devices, trying Safari costs nothing and could pay off in battery life, especially if you watch a lot of video unplugged. You also get Reader Mode for clutter-free articles, Profiles to keep work and personal browsing apart, and tab syncing with your iPhone and iPad. On Macs with Apple Intelligence, Safari can group tabs by topic and watch a page for changes like a price drop, a feature Apple calls Notify Me.

Chrome still makes more sense for some people. If you use a Windows PC at work or an Android phone, Chrome keeps your bookmarks, passwords and tabs in sync across all of them, while Safari only runs on Apple’s own systems. Its extension library is also much bigger. If you depend on a particular add-on, check whether a Safari version exists before you switch. Chrome users who mainly want longer battery life can also turn on Energy Saver and Memory Saver under Settings, then Performance, which cut background activity and the memory used by idle tabs.

Businesses face a different calculation. Single sign-on, company extensions and web apps all need testing, and a streaming benchmark says little about a day of video meetings.

Moving over is quick. On a Mac, Safari offers to import your Chrome bookmarks and saved passwords the first time you open it, or you can do it later from its menus. On an iPhone, the import lives in the Settings app.

To make it your default, open System Settings, find the Default web browser option and choose Safari. If you want a fair verdict, give it a few ordinary workdays and keep an eye on your battery percentage, rather than trusting either company’s lab numbers.