Apple announced a set of AI-powered updates to Safari in 2026, including a feature that lets users create their own browser extensions by describing what they want in plain language. The move is designed to address one of Safari’s long-standing weaknesses: a limited extension library compared to rivals like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
In a demo, Apple showed how a user could prompt Safari to build a “Recipe Keeper” extension by typing a description — “Save and track cooking recipes from around the web. Click the toolbar button to see your saved recipes and add notes to each.” Safari then used Apple Intelligence to generate a working extension based on that input.
Apple is also adding an AI-powered tab organizer that automatically sorts open tabs into categories based on their content. For example, tabs related to shopping for running shoes might be grouped under a label like “sneakers.” Google rolled out a similar feature for Chrome in 2024, though the source notes that feature may have since been discontinued. Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox offer comparable tab-grouping tools as well.
Two additional features are coming to Safari. The Passwords app will use Safari and Apple Intelligence to automatically navigate to a website, sign in, and update a compromised password on the user’s behalf — a capability Google first announced for Chrome last year. A new “Notify Me” feature will also allow users to describe the type of change they want to track on a webpage, such as a product restock or price drop, limiting unnecessary notifications.
Until now, Safari’s AI toolset has been limited largely to webpage summaries through a Highlights feature, leaving it behind Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. Apple appears to be taking a selective approach to adding AI features, focusing on tools it considers proven rather than matching competitors feature-for-feature.
Source: The Verge