iOS 15 Beta 6: What's New with Safari?

iOS 15 beta 6 has arrived, and as expected, it brings several new features and updates to Apple's Safari browser. In this article, we'll dive into all the changes you can expect from this latest beta release.

One of the most significant updates is the revamped address bar. Gone are the days of a cluttered address bar with a plethora of options scattered about. Instead, developers have introduced a more streamlined interface that puts the focus on the essential tasks at hand.

The new address bar is designed to be more efficient and intuitive. You can swipe up to view all your tabs, or tap on individual tabs to switch between them. The tab button has also been moved to the top of the screen, making it easier to access from anywhere in the browser.

Another notable update is the disappearance of share play. Unfortunately, this feature won't be returning with iOS 15 beta 6. However, developers have introduced a new way to share content with friends and family using the "Share" button. This feature allows you to quickly share links, articles, and more without having to leave the app.

The updated Safari browser also introduces a new download indicator. When you tap on the "Download" link in your Safari address bar, an icon will appear next to the address bar indicating that something is downloading. You can then tap this icon to get the status of the download or jump to the Files app where it's being saved.

In addition to these visual changes, iOS 15 beta 6 also brings several new settings options for Safari users. Developers have introduced a preference panel update that allows you to toggle between tab bar and single tab view, switch between landscape and portrait modes, and enable or disable website tinting.

The preferences panel update is available on both iPhone and iPadOS devices. On iPhones, you can access these settings by visiting the Safari app and tapping on "Settings" (three horizontal lines). On iPads, you'll need to visit the Settings app directly.

One of the most exciting updates in iOS 15 beta 6 is the new bookmarks feature. When you long press on the address bar, a menu will appear with options for bookmarking your current tab or accessing your history and reading list. This feature is designed to make it easier than ever to save favorite websites for later.

However, developers have also introduced a downside to this new feature: when you long press on the address bar, the bookmark options are no longer available. Instead, you'll see a voice search option instead of bookmarks. While this might be inconvenient for some users, others will appreciate the convenience of having a voice search feature right at their fingertips.

In conclusion, iOS 15 beta 6 brings several exciting updates to Apple's Safari browser. From revamped address bars and improved download indicators to new settings options and bookmarking features, there's something for everyone in this latest beta release. Whether you're a power user or just someone looking for a sleek and efficient browsing experience, iOS 15 beta 6 is definitely worth checking out.

One last thing to note is the landscape tab bar option. If you find yourself frequently accessing your Safari app on your iPad while it's in landscape mode, this feature might be exactly what you need. By enabling the landscape tab bar, you can easily switch between different tabs and access your favorite websites without having to leave the app.

Thumbs up if you appreciated this video by Jeff from Nine to Five Mac

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin this latest episode of what's new in ios shareplay goes on hiatus and there's a whole bunch of new safari changes changes that i think you may enjoy for the better here's what's new in ios 15 beta 6. so one of the most noteworthy characteristics of ios 15 beta 6 is actually what the release doesn't include as you may have heard share play has been removed from the ios beta and actually won't appear in the initial ios 15 public release so once ios 15 releases to the public shareplay will not be a part of that presumably shareplay will return in something like an ios 15.1 beta and then it will be released to the public and as you can see here shareplay has been removed from facetime and facetime settings kind of disappointing since shareplay was definitely one of the top five features in ios 15. of course id cards will not be released with the initial ios 15 beta the app privacy report also won't be available initially at the ios 15 public launch there are several other features that appear to be delayed or won't make the initial cut for ios 15's launch that includes custom email domains we haven't seen a sign of that just yet detailed 3d carplay navigation and another top 5 feature hasn't been seen just yet and that is universal control still holding out hope for that one though now to be fair for apple usually every year there is some feature that doesn't make the cut and is released later on in like a point one release but share play is definitely a flagship feature like it is one of the main features in my opinion that people are looking forward to what do you guys think let me know down below in the comment section and i'd say the same thing goes for universal control as well although not as important as shareplay given the environment we've lived in for the last year and a half with kovit again let me know what you guys think down below in the comment section but ios 15 beta 6 does include quite a few changes for you guessed it safari so apple must be a big fan of waffle house because they've waffled back and forth many times on the design in the direction of safari's address bar now there has been a lot of contention about the design of the revamped address bar in the previous versions of ios 15. and honestly i think this version right here is a good compromise you have the address bar at the bottom of the of the interface it's still touch enabled however you can see you have dedicated buttons just like you normally had in safari on ios 14 and below so on the right side you see beta 5 you see that combined address bar it's kind of fat and it basically combines everything into one bar which is a definite point of contention for sure for instance the share button did so much of the heavy lifting basically everything was just jammed under the share button even things that weren't really related traditionally to sharing like you had things like privacy report under your share button or request desktop website stuff that really just didn't belong there whereas here on beta 6 apple isn't requiring the address bar to wear so many hats basically it's giving you your traditional bottom toolbar along with the benefits of the updated address bar and honestly i think this is a good decision i like it particularly because it's easy to access the address bar to type in a search term whatever the case may be you can do so because the address bar is located at the bottom of the interface which is so nice makes it easy if you have a larger iphone like this iphone 12 pro max you don't have to stretch your thumb all the way to the top of the interface no the address bar is right at the bottom and if you scroll on the page you'll notice that everything sort of just hides out of the way you still have the name of the website the url of the condensed url but i like the animation how it hides both the address bar and the the toolbar at the bottom of the interface just like that really nice looking animation what do you guys think do you like this compromise because i think it's a compromise apple obviously reverted back a little bit or backtrack a little bit because there was such an outrage over safari's design but here's what's really interesting you see that little a button there if you tap that you'll notice a brand new option that allows you to show top address bar so you can actually almost revert back to how safari looked in ios 14 by tapping show top address bar and all of your other stuff is in this menu as well so it's been broken out of that share menu which makes a lot more sense but let's focus on that button at the top show top address bar i tap that and look what we have here everything's back to basically almost an ios 14 style so you have your address bar at the top it hides away when you scroll along with the toolbar at the bottom hides away when you scroll and it comes back just like that so in other words you can go back to the classic mode quote unquote for safari if you choose to do so and you can do so without visiting settings or anything you simply tap the little a button and now i can go back show bottom bar like that and it reverts back to the updated newfangled way of navigation with safari so personally i think this way is the better way and i'll show you why that is here in just a second but again easy to switch between the two which way do you prefer which method or layout do you prefer let me know what you guys think which one would you normally use on a regular basis now the downside is that you don't get any of the gesture functionality that the updated safari address bar allows so i'm going to show you that right now so we're going to go back to show bottom bar now here with this design it allows you to swipe on the address bar to linearly swipe between different tabs just like you can swipe between different apps by swiping on the little home indicator at the bottom of your iphone by the way check out our friends over at connect the watts go visit their youtube channel and subscribe sister side to nine to five mac just wanna plug that in right there but back to what i was saying among several of the reasons why i prefer the bottom bar is because it allows for these gestures to quickly swipe between tabs to me that's something that's super convenient and you don't get that when having the bar at the top but that's not the only gesture that you get swiping between different tabs you can also create a brand new tab by swiping over to the last tab and then swiping to the left again see that little plus button there notice that little plus button it's gonna pop in a view like that and create a brand new tab for you on your start page so you can quickly get to your favorite websites perform a new search enter a new url whatever you want to do so let me put the address bar back to the top of the screen and just briefly demonstrate that you lose your gesture ability there so can't swipe between tabs and if i swipe up here nothing happens so yeah big disadvantage when you don't use the bottom address bar but it doesn't stop there you can actually swipe up on that address bar as well to enter your tab view just like that so this allows you to quickly view all of your tabs you can of course swipe between tabs swipe up to view all tabs quickly tap on the tab you want to switch to swipe over swipe to the right swipe to the left it's just a really gesture driven interface when you use the updated safari but it's better than the previous betas because you have these buttons broken out so you can go back forward share and share is share it's not share plus a whole bunch of others unrelated things no it's typically what you would expect to find in the share menu is what you'll find here on beta 6. you also have your dedicated bookmarks button and you have a tab button as well just in case you don't want to use gestures or in case you've docked your your address bar at the top but the cool thing is that when you tap bookmarks it only takes up half the screen and then you can kind of swipe within that view as well for your history for your reading list and for your bookmarks which is really cool and of course you can expand it to make it full screen view as well or swipe down to minimize or just tap done to get rid of it now because you have that dedicated bookmarks button you no longer get the bookmark options when you long press on the address bar but you do see voice search now which is really cool so you can just tap voice search to perform a quick voice search like this now another safari change which is a little bit more subtle is the updated download indicator so when i tap download here you'll see that indicator appear right to the right of the a button in the status bar and that appears on every single tab and that download indicator is basically just an extension of the a button so they're basically one in the same so you tap on that area brings up all of your normal options but in addition you also have a download section you can see one there indicating i have one download and then you can tap it to get the status of that download or tap the little magnifying glass to jump right to the files app where it's downloading that particular file now if you move your address bar up to the top the download indicator will appear there as well as expected pretty simple straightforward stuff here now you will notice a preference panel update in ios 15 beta 6 pertaining to safari and ipad os beta users will recognize some similarities between the updated preferences here in an ipad os so you have an updated tab section which basically allows you to toggle between tab bar and single tab view which basically means you're moving the tab either to the bottom or to the top based on your preferences but the cool thing you don't even have to visit settings because like i showed you earlier several times you can do that right from safari itself now you'll also notice a couple of additional options the landscape tab bar so that applies if you're using your iphone in landscape mode and then you have allow website tinting so tinting used to be under an accessibility header but now it's in the main tab section and this is the tint that appears at the top of the interface to match the website but that will of course depend on if the website supports that now here is the landscape tab bar enabled allowing you to switch between your various tabs seeing the favicons the name of the tab and of course you can still view all of your tabs simply by tapping the tab button like that but if you don't like the landscape tab bar you can easily go back to the preferences and disable that so let's go ahead and do that swipe back over and now you see it's gone so it's kind of a mixed bag definitely disappointing to lose share play but i do love these updated safari changes what do you guys think let me know down below in the comment section thumbs up if you appreciated this video this is jeff with nine to five macin this latest episode of what's new in ios shareplay goes on hiatus and there's a whole bunch of new safari changes changes that i think you may enjoy for the better here's what's new in ios 15 beta 6. so one of the most noteworthy characteristics of ios 15 beta 6 is actually what the release doesn't include as you may have heard share play has been removed from the ios beta and actually won't appear in the initial ios 15 public release so once ios 15 releases to the public shareplay will not be a part of that presumably shareplay will return in something like an ios 15.1 beta and then it will be released to the public and as you can see here shareplay has been removed from facetime and facetime settings kind of disappointing since shareplay was definitely one of the top five features in ios 15. of course id cards will not be released with the initial ios 15 beta the app privacy report also won't be available initially at the ios 15 public launch there are several other features that appear to be delayed or won't make the initial cut for ios 15's launch that includes custom email domains we haven't seen a sign of that just yet detailed 3d carplay navigation and another top 5 feature hasn't been seen just yet and that is universal control still holding out hope for that one though now to be fair for apple usually every year there is some feature that doesn't make the cut and is released later on in like a point one release but share play is definitely a flagship feature like it is one of the main features in my opinion that people are looking forward to what do you guys think let me know down below in the comment section and i'd say the same thing goes for universal control as well although not as important as shareplay given the environment we've lived in for the last year and a half with kovit again let me know what you guys think down below in the comment section but ios 15 beta 6 does include quite a few changes for you guessed it safari so apple must be a big fan of waffle house because they've waffled back and forth many times on the design in the direction of safari's address bar now there has been a lot of contention about the design of the revamped address bar in the previous versions of ios 15. and honestly i think this version right here is a good compromise you have the address bar at the bottom of the of the interface it's still touch enabled however you can see you have dedicated buttons just like you normally had in safari on ios 14 and below so on the right side you see beta 5 you see that combined address bar it's kind of fat and it basically combines everything into one bar which is a definite point of contention for sure for instance the share button did so much of the heavy lifting basically everything was just jammed under the share button even things that weren't really related traditionally to sharing like you had things like privacy report under your share button or request desktop website stuff that really just didn't belong there whereas here on beta 6 apple isn't requiring the address bar to wear so many hats basically it's giving you your traditional bottom toolbar along with the benefits of the updated address bar and honestly i think this is a good decision i like it particularly because it's easy to access the address bar to type in a search term whatever the case may be you can do so because the address bar is located at the bottom of the interface which is so nice makes it easy if you have a larger iphone like this iphone 12 pro max you don't have to stretch your thumb all the way to the top of the interface no the address bar is right at the bottom and if you scroll on the page you'll notice that everything sort of just hides out of the way you still have the name of the website the url of the condensed url but i like the animation how it hides both the address bar and the the toolbar at the bottom of the interface just like that really nice looking animation what do you guys think do you like this compromise because i think it's a compromise apple obviously reverted back a little bit or backtrack a little bit because there was such an outrage over safari's design but here's what's really interesting you see that little a button there if you tap that you'll notice a brand new option that allows you to show top address bar so you can actually almost revert back to how safari looked in ios 14 by tapping show top address bar and all of your other stuff is in this menu as well so it's been broken out of that share menu which makes a lot more sense but let's focus on that button at the top show top address bar i tap that and look what we have here everything's back to basically almost an ios 14 style so you have your address bar at the top it hides away when you scroll along with the toolbar at the bottom hides away when you scroll and it comes back just like that so in other words you can go back to the classic mode quote unquote for safari if you choose to do so and you can do so without visiting settings or anything you simply tap the little a button and now i can go back show bottom bar like that and it reverts back to the updated newfangled way of navigation with safari so personally i think this way is the better way and i'll show you why that is here in just a second but again easy to switch between the two which way do you prefer which method or layout do you prefer let me know what you guys think which one would you normally use on a regular basis now the downside is that you don't get any of the gesture functionality that the updated safari address bar allows so i'm going to show you that right now so we're going to go back to show bottom bar now here with this design it allows you to swipe on the address bar to linearly swipe between different tabs just like you can swipe between different apps by swiping on the little home indicator at the bottom of your iphone by the way check out our friends over at connect the watts go visit their youtube channel and subscribe sister side to nine to five mac just wanna plug that in right there but back to what i was saying among several of the reasons why i prefer the bottom bar is because it allows for these gestures to quickly swipe between tabs to me that's something that's super convenient and you don't get that when having the bar at the top but that's not the only gesture that you get swiping between different tabs you can also create a brand new tab by swiping over to the last tab and then swiping to the left again see that little plus button there notice that little plus button it's gonna pop in a view like that and create a brand new tab for you on your start page so you can quickly get to your favorite websites perform a new search enter a new url whatever you want to do so let me put the address bar back to the top of the screen and just briefly demonstrate that you lose your gesture ability there so can't swipe between tabs and if i swipe up here nothing happens so yeah big disadvantage when you don't use the bottom address bar but it doesn't stop there you can actually swipe up on that address bar as well to enter your tab view just like that so this allows you to quickly view all of your tabs you can of course swipe between tabs swipe up to view all tabs quickly tap on the tab you want to switch to swipe over swipe to the right swipe to the left it's just a really gesture driven interface when you use the updated safari but it's better than the previous betas because you have these buttons broken out so you can go back forward share and share is share it's not share plus a whole bunch of others unrelated things no it's typically what you would expect to find in the share menu is what you'll find here on beta 6. you also have your dedicated bookmarks button and you have a tab button as well just in case you don't want to use gestures or in case you've docked your your address bar at the top but the cool thing is that when you tap bookmarks it only takes up half the screen and then you can kind of swipe within that view as well for your history for your reading list and for your bookmarks which is really cool and of course you can expand it to make it full screen view as well or swipe down to minimize or just tap done to get rid of it now because you have that dedicated bookmarks button you no longer get the bookmark options when you long press on the address bar but you do see voice search now which is really cool so you can just tap voice search to perform a quick voice search like this now another safari change which is a little bit more subtle is the updated download indicator so when i tap download here you'll see that indicator appear right to the right of the a button in the status bar and that appears on every single tab and that download indicator is basically just an extension of the a button so they're basically one in the same so you tap on that area brings up all of your normal options but in addition you also have a download section you can see one there indicating i have one download and then you can tap it to get the status of that download or tap the little magnifying glass to jump right to the files app where it's downloading that particular file now if you move your address bar up to the top the download indicator will appear there as well as expected pretty simple straightforward stuff here now you will notice a preference panel update in ios 15 beta 6 pertaining to safari and ipad os beta users will recognize some similarities between the updated preferences here in an ipad os so you have an updated tab section which basically allows you to toggle between tab bar and single tab view which basically means you're moving the tab either to the bottom or to the top based on your preferences but the cool thing you don't even have to visit settings because like i showed you earlier several times you can do that right from safari itself now you'll also notice a couple of additional options the landscape tab bar so that applies if you're using your iphone in landscape mode and then you have allow website tinting so tinting used to be under an accessibility header but now it's in the main tab section and this is the tint that appears at the top of the interface to match the website but that will of course depend on if the website supports that now here is the landscape tab bar enabled allowing you to switch between your various tabs seeing the favicons the name of the tab and of course you can still view all of your tabs simply by tapping the tab button like that but if you don't like the landscape tab bar you can easily go back to the preferences and disable that so let's go ahead and do that swipe back over and now you see it's gone so it's kind of a mixed bag definitely disappointing to lose share play but i do love these updated safari changes what do you guys think let me know down below in the comment section thumbs up if you appreciated this video this is jeff with nine to five mac\n"