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If you use a Mac or an iPhone, it’s hard to pick a different browser over Safari. It’s incredibly fast, uses minimal resources, and respects user privacy. But if you also use a PC, you won’t have the luxury of installing Apple’s flagship browser on Windows since the Cupertino-based tech giant does not develop Safari for the Windows PC. That’s a major issue when your gear consists of cross-platform products.
What you can do is install an older version of Safari on Windows 10 or 11, although we highly advise against that due to compatibility and security-related issues. The best and safest option is to sync your browsing data from Safari to Chrome or Edge on your PC via iCloud for Windows. Setting up macOS on your PC and using Safari that way is another feasible option.
Table of Contents
Download and Install Safari on Your Windows PC
Apple halted the development of Safari for Windows in 2012. However, the final version of the browser (Safari v.5.1.7) is freely available on the internet, so you can quickly download and install it on your Windows 10 or 11 PC. The problem? It’s terribly slow and dated, lacks compatibility with most web apps, and poses security risks. You also can’t sync your browsing data, so it’s not a solution if you want to access bookmarks and passwords.
Regardless, the steps below will walk you through downloading and installing Safari on your Windows 10/11 PC. But unless you just want to have a feel of how Safari looked almost a decade earlier, we recommend you stay away from it.
1. Download the Safari installer from a software download portal such as Uptodown, Filehippo, or TechSpot. It weighs in at 36.7MB. Unfortunately, Apple no longer supports Safari for Windows, so you can’t get it from an official source.
2. Double-click the downloaded SafariSetup executable file.
3. Select Next on the Safari Setup’s Welcome screen.
4. Accept the license agreement and select Next.
5. Specify if you want to add Safari as a desktop shortcut or not. Also, decide if you prefer it as the default browser on your computer (we recommend you don’t select this option). Select Next to continue.
6. Pick an install directory (or leave the default folder path) and select Install.
7. Wait for the Safari installer to finish installing Safari on your computer. Then, select Finish.
After installing Safari, you can choose to open it by double-clicking the Safari icon on the desktop. Or, you can open it by selecting Safari on the Start menu’s programs list.
Despite being almost ten years old, Safari for Windows doesn’t look too out of place. To the top, you have the familiar URL bar (you can’t use it to perform searches, however), a Bookmarks strip underneath, and a dedicated Search bar on the left corner. By default, new tabs display frequently visiting sites in thumbnail format—you can use the Top Sites and History tabs to switch them and your browsing history.
Selecting the cog-shaped icon at the right corner of the screen reveals the Safari menu, where you can choose to customize the toolbar, access your browsing history, launch a private browsing window, and so on.
Selecting Preferences opens the Preferences pane, which provides options to modify the homepage, pick a default search engine, adjust privacy settings, manage extensions (although extensions support is non-existent), etc.
What the browser does not allow is to sign in with an Apple ID. That makes it impossible to sync your browsing data from an iPhone or Mac. Even if the functionality were present previously, Apple probably would’ve stopped you from signing in to it by now.
During our Safari tests on Windows, the browser started showing its age. Most websites took a long time to load, while web apps (such as YouTube and Google Maps) simply failed or prompted us to switch to a compatible browser. Other than for basic web browsing, it was practically useless.
Safari for Windows also hasn’t received security updates in almost a decade, so we recommend that you don’t attempt to use it for any sensitive activities such as banking or shopping.
Sync Safari Browsing Data via iCloud for Windows
If your gear consists of a PC and iPhone or Mac, you can sync your passwords and bookmarks from Safari with Google Chrome and vice-versa by installing iCloud for Windows. That’s the most convenient method for accessing your browsing data on each platform.
iCloud for Windows also offers password syncing for Microsoft Edge and bookmarks syncing for Mozilla Firefox. However, only Chrome receives support for both.
If you don’t have iCloud for Windows on your PC, you can get it via the Microsoft Store or the Apple website. If you already have it, make sure to upgrade it to at least version 12.5 or later (you can do that via the Microsoft Store’s Downloads and updates screen or by running the Apple Software Update applet).
With iCloud for Windows up and running, open the iCloud app and check the boxes next to Passwords and Bookmarks. You can also activate additional iCloud services such as Photos and Drive if you want.
Follow that by installing the iCloud Passwords on Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. The former lets you insert and save passwords to the iCloud Keychain. You can also use the iCloud Passwords app (which installs automatically alongside iCloud for Windows) to manage your passwords in Windows. On the other hand, the iCloud Bookmarks extension syncs passwords between Chrome/Firefox and Safari.
Download: iCloud Passwords (Chrome)
Download: iCloud Bookmarks (Chrome)
Download: iCloud Passwords (Edge)
Download: iCloud Bookmarks (Firefox)
Run Safari via a macOS Virtual Machine
If you want to use the most recent version of Safari on your PC (perhaps to test a feature or extension), the only way you can do that is by running macOS via virtualization software. However, the procedure is not convenient. For starters, Mac’s operating system is not natively supported by most VM software, so installation generally relies on workarounds relying on additional software. Also, it requires lots of free disk space and uses up system resources, not to mention that virtual machine guests generally run sluggishly compared to the host operating system.
If you still want to go ahead and install macOS, the easiest way to do that is by following the instructions within this macOS Virtualbox project on GitHub. It lets you install macOS Catalina as a virtual machine via a Bash script. We’ve condensed it into the following steps:
1. Download and install Oracle VM VirtualBox on your PC (it’s free).
2. Download and install Cygwin with the following dependencies (you can select them during installation).
- bash
- coreutils
- gzip
- unzip
- wget
- xxd
- dmg2img
3. Download the macos-guest-virtualbox.sh bash script from GitHub.
4. Open the Cygwin Terminal. Then, drag and drop the bash script and press Enter.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions to set up macOS as a virtual machine on your PC.
After the setup procedure, you can open and use Safari by selecting the Safari icon on the Mac’s Dock. Before you do that, however, it’s a good idea to update macOS and Safari. To do that, open the Apple menu and select System Preferences > Software Update > Update Now.
iCloud for Windows Is the Most Convenient
Although it’s possible to download and install Safari on your Windows 10/11 computer, we recommend you stray away from it. The security risks alone make it impractical, and it’s not like you can use it for any serious web browsing anyway due to compatibility issues.
Since the most likely reason you would want to install Safari involves syncing your passwords and bookmarks, using iCloud for Windows is the only viable alternative. But if you do have the time and just want to try out the latest version of Safari, your best option is to set up macOS as a virtual machine on your PC.
