Switching Guides

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Chrome to Safari

This guide is for moving your daily browsing from Chrome to Safari on a Mac — the things you do without thinking, like saving a bookmark, finding a tab from yesterday, or getting your passwords to fill in. Most of the features you rely on exist in Safari, but they sit in different menus and carry different names: profiles become separate Safari profiles, Chrome's Reading List and Collections split across Safari's Reading List and Tab Groups, and extensions come from the App Store rather than a web store. The table below is the translation layer.

Written against Safari 18-era macOS and current Chrome. Anything marked iPhone/iPad assumes the same Apple ID signed in on both devices.

Feature-by-feature

Chrome features and their Safari equivalents. Scroll sideways on narrow screens.
In Chrome In Safari
Adding a bookmark: click the star at the right of the address bar, or Cmd + D, then pick a folder in the popup. Cmd + D, or hold the + that appears at the left of the address field. A sheet drops down asking where to file it and lets you edit the name and add a description. Bookmarks › Add Bookmark does the same from the menu bar.
Organizing bookmarks: Bookmark Manager at chrome://bookmarks (Cmd + Option + B), with drag-and-drop folders and a search box. Bookmarks › Edit Bookmarks (Cmd + Option + B) opens a full-tab editor; the sidebar (Cmd + Ctrl + 1) gives you a persistent tree for dragging pages into folders. Right-click any folder › New Folder to nest. Renaming is a slow double-click or Return on the selected row.
Bookmarks bar: toggled with Cmd + Shift + B; items live in the "Bookmarks bar" folder. Called Favorites. Toggle with Cmd + Shift + B (View › Show Favorites Bar). Whatever is in the Favorites folder appears there, and the same items show as large icons on every new tab page. Press Cmd + 1…9 to open the first nine directly.
Importing bookmarks: Chrome pulls from other browsers via Bookmarks › Import Bookmarks and Settings, or an exported HTML file. File › Import From › Google Chrome imports bookmarks, history and saved passwords in one pass — Chrome must be installed on the same Mac. If you're moving from another machine, export from Chrome to an HTML file first, then use File › Import From › Bookmarks HTML File. Imported items land in a dated "Imported" folder rather than merging into Favorites, so plan on some tidying.
Syncing across devices: sign in to a Google Account; Chrome syncs bookmarks, history, passwords, tabs and extensions to Chrome on any platform, including Windows and Android. Sync is tied to iCloud, not the browser: System Settings › [your name] › iCloud › Safari. That covers bookmarks, Reading List, Tab Groups and open tabs across Mac, iPhone and iPad. Passwords sync separately through iCloud Keychain / the Passwords app. There is no Safari for Windows or Android, so plan for Apple devices only — iCloud for Windows can sync bookmarks into Chrome or Edge on a PC as a partial bridge.
Extensions: installed from the Chrome Web Store; managed at chrome://extensions; a huge catalogue. Safari extensions come from the Mac App Store: Safari › Settings › Extensions, then "More Extensions" to browse. Manage per-extension site permissions on that same pane. The catalogue is much smaller and many are paid, but the big categories are covered — 1Password, Bitwarden, AdGuard, Grammarly, Raindrop, Vimium-style keyboard navigation. Chrome extensions are not compatible; check for a Safari build before you commit.
Read it later: Chrome's Reading list in the side panel (bookmark star › "Add to reading list"), or a third-party service like Pocket. Reading List, in the sidebar (Cmd + Ctrl + 2). Add the current page with Cmd + Shift + D, or Shift-click the + in the address field. Safari can save the whole page for offline reading (Settings › Advanced › "Save articles for offline reading automatically"), which Chrome's list doesn't do, and it syncs to your iPhone.
Tab groups: right-click a tab › Add tab to new group; groups are colour-coded, collapsible and saved to a group list. Tab Groups live in the sidebar rather than the tab strip. Create one from the sidebar's + menu, or Window › New Tab Group. Groups sync via iCloud to your other devices and can be shared with other people (Share Tab Group), which Chrome has no direct equivalent for. Switching groups replaces the whole tab strip instead of expanding a coloured section — different mental model, worth ten minutes of experimenting.
Passwords and autofill: Google Password Manager at chrome://password-manager; addresses and payment methods under Settings › Autofill. Passwords live in the separate Passwords app (macOS Sequoia and later; earlier versions use System Settings › Passwords), backed by iCloud Keychain and shared with every app on the Mac, not just Safari. It generates strong passwords, stores passkeys and verification codes, and flags reused or breached passwords. Contact and card autofill are configured in Safari › Settings › AutoFill, which pulls your card from your Contacts card and Apple Pay.
Tracking prevention: third-party cookies are restricted, plus optional "Do Not Track" and Privacy Sandbox ad-topic settings. Intelligent Tracking Prevention is on by default and needs no configuration — cross-site trackers are blocked and their cookies purged. Safari › Settings › Privacy adds "Hide IP address from trackers" and link-tracking-parameter stripping. Click the shield-ish icon in the toolbar (or Safari › Privacy Report) to see what was blocked on the current site. With iCloud+, Private Relay hides your IP and DNS from everyone including Apple.
Search engine: Settings › Search engine, with a manage-list for custom engines and site shortcuts (@keyword searches). Safari › Settings › Search › Search engine — Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia. You can set a different engine for Private Browsing windows. Custom search engines aren't supported natively, but typing a site's name and pressing Tab triggers Quick Website Search for sites you've searched before (enable it on the same settings pane).
Downloads: a shelf/bubble in the toolbar; full history at chrome://downloads (Cmd + Shift + J); "Ask where to save each file" is optional. A downloads button appears at the right of the toolbar with a popover list; Cmd + Option + L opens it. Safari › Settings › General sets the folder, whether to ask each time, and when to clear the list. "Open safe files after downloading" is on by default — many people turn it off, since it auto-unzips archives and opens PDFs and disk images unprompted.
Pinned tabs: right-click a tab › Pin; the tab shrinks to a favicon at the left of the strip and reopens with the window. Right-click a tab › Pin Tab, or drag a tab to the far left of the strip. Pinned tabs stay put across every window and every Tab Group, persist between launches, and quietly reload in the background. Clicking a link in a pinned tab that leads off-site opens a normal tab instead, which keeps the pin anchored.
Profiles: separate work/personal profiles with their own bookmarks, history, extensions and Google account, switched from the avatar button. Safari › Settings › Profiles creates profiles with separate history, cookies, Favorites, Tab Groups and enabled extensions. Switch from the sidebar or File › New Window with a profile chosen. Profiles are not tied to a separate account the way Chrome's are — everything still syncs under your one Apple ID.
Private browsing: Incognito window (Cmd + Shift + N); closing the window discards the session. Private Browsing window (Cmd + Shift + N), with each private tab isolated from the others rather than sharing one session. Windows lock behind Touch ID or your password when you step away, and Safari can be set to always open in Private Browsing (Settings › General › "Safari opens with").
Developer tools: Cmd + Option + I opens DevTools; available immediately. Web Inspector, but you must first turn on Safari › Settings › Advanced › "Show features for web developers". After that, Cmd + Option + I works as expected and a Develop menu appears with responsive design mode and user-agent switching.
Continuing on another device: Chrome's "Tabs from other devices" list under History, or send-to-device from the address bar. Handoff surfaces the page you're reading on the Mac at the left edge of the iPhone's App Switcher (and vice versa) with no action from you. AirDrop sends a page to a nearby device from the Share button, and iCloud Tabs lists every open tab from your other devices on Safari's start page.
Finding a tab in a crowded window: the tab search chevron at the top-right of the window (Cmd + Shift + A). Hover any tab for a live preview of the page, or press Cmd + Shift + \ for Show All Tabs — a thumbnail grid of every tab in the window, with a search field that also reaches your iCloud tabs from other devices.
Translation: Google Translate is built in and prompts automatically on foreign-language pages. Built-in translation too: a translate icon appears in the address field on supported pages, or use the same field's menu › Translate to…. Fewer languages are supported than Chrome, and translation happens on Apple's servers, not Google's. Reader (Cmd + Shift + R) strips a page to text and pairs well with it.
Voice assistant / OS integration: Google Assistant integration on mobile; little OS-level tie-in on the desktop. Siri can open pages, read them aloud and suggest sites in Spotlight based on your Safari history. Pages you visit feed Spotlight search results, Apple Pay works natively at checkout with Touch ID, and Safari is the only browser on the Mac that gets full battery-life optimization from macOS — which is the practical reason many switchers stick with it on a laptop.

Worth knowing before you commit

Where the switch usually snags

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