Safari 17 finally adds profiles
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It is 2023 and Apple has finally decided that profiles is a feature worthy of being included in a browser (even though Firefox and Chromium-based browsers have had them for years now
)Back in June, when this was announced at the WWDC, I was curious as how Safari would implement them. The way they had described them everywhere was not very clear and had given me the impression it wouldn't be as separate as profiles on Firefox and Chromium.
Now that I can test it, I can say that that is definitely the case. Only history, extensions, cookies, tab groups (Safari's workspaces implementation), and favourite bookmarks (emphasis on the favourite part) are separated; toolbar customisations are also separated, but this was never once mentioned anywhere.
Everything else is shared, meaning browser settings, all other bookmarks, passwords, and site settings (e.g. whether a page is allowed to play sound or auto-play video). There's definitely some benefits in keeping these shared across all created profiles, but whether that's an improvement to Firefox's and Chromium's implementation that completely separates everything is up to debate.
