Safari Is Finally Getting Power-User Features on Mac, iPad, and iPhone Duo

I left Google Chrome for Arc, a Chromium-based “operating system” for the web by The Browser Company, four years ago and never looked back. But with Arc being sunset in December, I may move back to Safari on my Mac now that it’s getting three power-user features with the latest software updates. One of the hallmarks of Arc is vertical tabs. I know, I know—other browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Firefox now have options to put your tabs in a sidebar, but it was Arc that popularized it (even though Edge launched the feature first). With the developer beta for macOS 27.3, Apple’s web browser, Safari, gets vertical tabs, too. Finally. In typical Apple fashion, though, vertical tabs look and work a little differently. Tabs show up on the left side of Safari as favicon icons. You can hover over them to show the tab name. You can also adjust them so that you can see the tab’s name. The vertical tabs can also be used to stay on top of Topics, or grouped tabs. In a virtual demo, the feature looked very fluid. Vertical tabs are also launching on iPad and iPhone Duo in the iPadOS 27.3 developer beta and iOS 27.3 developer beta, respectively. It’ll work exactly the same as on macOS and works in both portrait and landscape orientations. Multi-device support is low-key clutch for me. Unfortunately, the feature is not launching on regular iPhones like the iPhone 18 Pro. My guess is that the screens are too small and the aspect ratios do not work well with vertical tabs. Safari is also getting an “Adaptive Dark Mode” that intelligently converts a website into one with a dark background to make it easier on the eyes. It’s not just turning a bright background black. The feature also adjusts text for contrast, inverts logos and graphics, recolors vector artwork, and rebalances layered shadows. As a committed dark mode user—I turn it on system-wide on all my devices and in any apps that support it—I’m elated to see this feature. When you turn on Adaptive Dark Mode, you’ll be shown a preview of the converted website. If everything looks good, you can click “Try” to view the website in dark mode just that one time. If a website is already dark, Adaptive Dark Mode may make it appear even darker. Additionally, you can set the feature to always turn on or only when you visit certain websites. I can’t wait to never be blinded by a bright website again. Adaptive Dark Mode only works on macOS, not iPhone or iPad. Finally, there’s a new “Siri AI Custom Actions” feature that allows you to ask Siri AI, on devices that support Apple Intelligence, to move, sort, organize, and close tabs using a text or voice prompt. In a virtual demo, I saw an Apple rep ask Siri AI to “put the Kyoto tabs into a tab group” while planning a trip to Japan, “Close all my Reddit tabs,” and “Clear my history for this site for the last 20 days.” And coming soon, Siri AI can also understand an entire website even if you haven’t scrolled through the whole article. You’ll be able to ask questions about the webpage, allowing for even more on-screen intelligence. Audio Intelligence © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo The release of iOS 27.3 developer beta also adds the long-awaited “Audio Intelligence” features for Apple Watch that were announced in September. Available for Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, Audio Intelligence is a suite of Apple Intelligence features that make use of the microphones, S11 chips inside of the smartwatches, and on-device and cloud-based AI models to deliver sound and music recognition capabilities. There are four features launching as part of Audio Intelligence. Sound Recognition detects sirens, alarms, and doorbells and then notifies you. Apple is billing this feature as useful for the deaf or hard of hearing. Music Recognition automatically detects a song playing in the background and shows results in a Smart Stack widget. This feature is similar to the Now Playing feature that has been on Google Pixel phones for several generations—only it’s for Apple Watches, not the iPhone. Live Rewind and Siri Recap are the most controversial. Live Rewind shows a “text snippet” (Apple is not calling it a transcription) of the last 15 seconds of ambient audio heard by your Apple Watch after you’ve double-pressed the Digital Crown. The text info can then be saved to the Siri app. The feature has a clear audio chime and on-screen visual to show that it’s active. Apple is advertising it as a feature that’s useful for recalling something you might have missed, like during a lecture or meeting, something mentioned on the radio, or something you might be embarrassed to ask someone to repeat. Audio is constantly being “replaced” with newer audio that’s—for lack of a better way to phrase it—filtered through the microphones. Siri Recap “ambiently takes notes on your conversations throughout your day” and then creates “high-level” summaries generated by Apple Intelligence. Again, this is not a transcription, and Apple has gone to great lengths to ensure it’s privacy-focused. For example, no names or locations are included in the summaries unless explicitly mentioned by the speaker, there are no speaker attributions (not even vague Speaker 1 and Speaker 2 identifiers), and no sensitive information such as banking account numbers is included. I’m also told that Siri Recap summaries are stripped of emotion, inferences, and tone to make them as neutral as possible. These summaries can be saved in Apple Notes or the Journal app. Summaries that are not acted on will automatically be deleted after seven days. Apple touts Siri Recap as a way to stay present throughout a day while still being able to get an overview of what happened. On the one hand, Apple stresses that Live Rewind and Siri Recap are opt-in and never “recording.” I put recording in quotes because while the features never save any audio, they are “listening” or “capturing” or, as I call it, “filtering” audio in the background to process it securely. And Apple is transparent on how the audio is processed. Audio is filtered through the Apple Watch’s microphones, then passed through the S11 chip’s Secure Exclave, and then the audio is processed by a paired iPhone’s Secure Enclave. No audio is saved/stored on either device or in the cloud before, during, and after processing, and it can’t be accessed or recovered by anyone, not even Apple. I have not tried Live Rewind or Siri Recap, so I don’t know how well they work. I plan to once I have the developer betas installed. However, I do think that with the way Apple has designed the features for privacy and never saves any audio, they aren’t as creepy as you might think. Of course, just because a feature is well-designed with full control by consumers, it doesn’t mean it will be socially accepted. Look at smart glasses with cameras. Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses have an LED light on them to let people around you know when you’ve activated the camera, but people are still calling them “pervert glasses.” Google Glass was destroyed because it looked weird. Ultimately, nobody—not even Apple—is forcing Live Recap and Siri Rewind onto you. Just don’t turn the features on if you don’t want them. We’ll see how well consumers actually feel once they have access to using them in the wild. Technology can always be abused. I really hope Audio Intelligence isn’t.