Which browser should you use?

Among the most widely used current browsers, Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Edge, Firefox remains one of the fastest and safest.

Safari, like Mail, usually uses a little more graphics resources. More importantly, it has a major drawback: it is only updated a few times a year and only for the latest version of the operating system.

The older your system is compared with the current version of macOS, the older your Safari version is. For example, if your Mac still runs Catalina, macOS 10.15, your version of Safari is almost six years old in 2026. For a web browser, that is far too old, both for security and for compatibility with modern websites.

It is therefore better to use Firefox or Chrome. However, Firefox is far less demanding than Chrome when it comes to the macOS version.

At the moment:

• Firefox runs from macOS 11 Big Sur.
• Chrome requires macOS 12 Monterey and already recommends macOS 13 Ventura for future versions.

This difference also exists for older systems. You can therefore use more recent versions of Firefox than Chrome.

For macOS 10.13 High Sierra, 10.14 Mojave and 10.15 Catalina, Mozilla offers Firefox ESR, which still gives correct access to around 90 to 95% of websites.

For Macs running macOS 10.7 or later with at least 128 MB of video memory, Waterfox Classic is an excellent alternative. Based on Firefox, it receives more recent updates than those officially available for these older macOS versions. Be careful to select the classic version.

For Intel Macs running macOS 10.5 and 10.6, the recommended browser is Roccat.

Finally, for PowerPC Macs running macOS 10.3 to 10.5, TenFourFox remains the reference. It is available according to the processor, G3, G4 or G5, and is a version of Firefox adapted for these machines.