You Can Now Customize Profiles in Safari
Browser profiles are an important feature for separating your personal and work browsing, but Apple only got around to adding this feature to Safari in 2023. However, profiles are now available in iOS 17 and macOS 14 Sonoma , and they are great. Not only can you separate browsing tabs for work and play, but you can also decide which browser extensions will work in each profile.
This move is great for your privacy: Browser extensions can access a lot of your data, but profiles make it easy to limit how much data is accessed. If fewer extensions are enabled, Safari will also load faster and use fewer resources, which is an added bonus. You can even use profiles to customize different behaviors, such as having separate new tab pages for each profile.
Set up Safari profiles on your Mac
After installing macOS Sonoma, open Safari and press Command + to open Settings. (You can also do this by clicking the Safari button in the menu bar and choosing Preferences .) Here, select the Profiles tab and select Start Using Profiles .
You can now name the tab group, select a glyph, select a background color, and choose whether you want to create a new bookmarks folder for this profile. (I’d recommend using a separate bookmarks folder as it’s another way to separate your work and personal profiles.)
When you’re done, click Create Profile and then complete the setup. On the profile settings page, select the General tab and select the New windows open with and New tabs open with preferences. Then select the Extensions tab and select the ones that this profile needs.
If you’re having trouble choosing separate extensions for each profile, here’s a simple example that might help you figure it out: Let’s say you create a profile for browsing during the day and one for the evening. The day profile may not need the dark mode extension , but the night profile does. Likewise, you can choose YouTube-related extensions for your personal profile, but not for work. (Unless watching YouTube is a valuable component of your workday.)
After setting up profiles, you can easily switch between them. Click your profile name in the address bar, located to the left of the Back and Forward buttons. Select the profile you want here and Safari will switch it for you. Note that your profiles sync across all devices, so you don’t have to set them up again on other Apple devices.
How to Set Up Safari Profiles on Your iPhone or iPad
To set up Safari profiles on an iPhone or iPad running iOS 17 , go to Settings > Safari and scroll down to the Profiles section. Select New Profile , choose a name, glyph, and color. When you’re ready, you can click the “Done” button in the top right corner. Then tap the profile name on the Settings page and select Manage Extensions . Select the browser extensions you want and click Back when finished.
That’s all! Your Safari profile is set up. To switch between profiles, open Safari on iPhone, tap the tabs icon in the bottom right corner, then select the profile icon at the bottom of the screen. Now click on “Profile” and select the profile you want to switch to.