Mac comes with Safari as a default web browser app. Though Safari works well for visiting website, many prefer Chrome for development and integration purposes. If you are using Safari, did you anytime wonder how a website you see in Safari will look like in Chrome on Mac? You will probably install Chrome and check the site. However, what will you do if you want to test in Chrome Windows version or Microsoft Edge Windows version? Good thing is that it is not necessary to install Chrome and you can change the user agent in Safari as Chrome and test the sites easily.
User Agents
Each browser has its own user agent string so that the website owner can identify how the site is being accessed. The string will change based on the device, operating system and browser version you use. For example, below is the user agent for Chrome in Mac. You can use this free tool to check your browser’s user agent.
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/114.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
From this information, you can find the device is Macintosh and Chrome version 114 is used to access your website. For mere testing purposes, you do not need to install Chrome, Edge or Firefox in your Mac for checking the websites on those browsers. All you need is to simply switch the user agent string in Safari and test the site’s appearance.
Changing User Agent in Safari Mac
Since user agent is kind of developer stuff, Safari by default will disable this feature. You need to first enable “Develop” menu to reveal the feature in Safari.
- Open Safari app in Mac and go to “Safari > Settings…” menu.
- Go to “Advanced” tab and enable “Show features for web developers” option showing at the bottom.
- Close Safari Settings pop-up and now you will see a “Develop” menu added to the browser.
- Click on “Develop” menu and hover over “User Agent” to view a list of items.
- By default, Safari automatically chooses the user agent and you can switch to one of the available agents from the list.
- If you want to check the string, just hover over any item and Safari will show the full string as a tooltip for you to check.
Available and Custom User Agents
As of Safari 17.0, below are the available user agents showing in the menu items for the latest OS/browser versions. User agent string will be automatically updated in Safari when the OS/browser gets new version.
- Safari – Mac, iPhone, iPad Mini and iPad.
- Microsoft Edge – macOS and Windows
- Google Chrome – macOS and Windows
- Firefox – macOS and Windows
You can switch the user agent to any of these browsers and test the site. If you want to use custom string, then click on “Custom” menu showing as a last option in the menu. This will show a text box in the pop-up where you can enter your custom user agent string and click “OK” button.
Testing Websites
After choosing the user agent, open the site that you want to test. Now, Safari will load the site as if you are seeing on different browser or device.
You can switch the user agent any time and Safari will reload the page using the new user agent. This way you can test whether the site is loading properly on different browsers without installing them on your Mac.
If you are using Chrome, learn more on how to change user agent in Google Chrome.
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