It’s almost impossible to beat Safari on the Mac in terms of performance.

The fact that you have to use the confusing menu bars whenever you want to configure the browser seems rather dated. But its tiny tab strip and address bar aren’t exactly geared toward great user experience. On the other hand, Safari feels smooth and polished to near perfection. However, those issues aren’t that serious to put a dent in your browsing experience. Animations and transitions feel jarring, and I’ve often experienced input lag while navigating the user interface. However, Microsoft Edge does feel rather clunky and rough. At the same time, the Edge menu gives instant access to browser settings, extensions, progressive web apps, and other features. The nifty profile icon also allows you to manage, create, and use multiple profiles conveniently. The browser features a slightly larger-than-average address bar, which makes performing Omnibox searches a breeze. You do get a rather annoying news feed, but it’s something that you can quickly turn off. The default tabs provide a search bar that you can comfortably type into and quick links to sites that you frequently visit.

Microsoft Edge doesn’t attempt to do anything special compared to Chromium alternatives such as Opera or Vivaldi. Here’s my take on how Microsoft Edge fares against Safari on Mac. I’ve used Microsoft Edge alongside Safari ever since its arrival on the Mac. Google Chrome uses the same browser engine, so adopting Chromium guarantees Edge greater web compatibility. But being based on the Chromium engine does give Microsoft Edge an advantage coming into unfamiliar territory. Safari runs like a charm on the Mac with great performance and battery life.

But how does it stack against Apple’s own native Safari browser for macOS? And rather surprisingly, Microsoft Edge is now also available on the Mac. After ditching the old EdgeHTML engine in favor of Chromium, it has finally started to gain serious traction. A while back, Microsoft Edge was just the default Windows 10 web browser.

Download microsoft edge on mac