Roger Fingas
Though it's included by default with the upcoming macOS High Sierra, Apple on Tuesday released Safari 11 for macOS Sierra and OS X El Capitan, giving people early access to the finished browser's features.
The update — available through the Mac App Store — prevents audio from auto-playing on "most" websites, according to Apple. Users can also configure things like auto-play, content blockers, and Reader on a per-site basis, or make settings universal.
The browser also includes performance boosts, new controls for HTML audio and video, and better AutoFill accuracy when pulling data from Contacts.
macOS High Sierra is set to launch Sept. 25. In fact Safari 11 has long been available to people testing the beta and golden master versions of High Sierra, but until now getting it has required registering with Apple and installing potentially unstable code.
Other updates released today include Xcode 9, iOS 11 for iPhones, iPads, and iPods, tvOS 11 for the fourth-generation Apple TV, and watchOS 4 for the Apple Watch. Many first- and third-party mobile apps are getting upgrades as well, such as TestFlight and Swift Playgrounds.
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18 Comments
Totally looking forward to blocking auto play. Does anyone know if it's audio only, or if you can completely block auto-play for both video and audio?
Edit: I just downloaded 11.0 and tested it on a repeat-offender web site - cnn.com. Safari did an awesome job of not playing the videos! Hopefully it will do as good a job of stopping all the annoying video ads, too!
This is THE BEST! I updated Safari and headed over to CNN (one of the worst offenders) Stops those damn autoplay videos right in their tracks. I really love this.
It's much, much faster than the previous version. Nice.
Holy crap, this is the first I've seen of the 'early' release of Safari 11. Downloading now!
I'm betting it doesn't stop video from loading. Having no definitive information, I thought it stopped Auto-Play specifically, and took that to mean neither video or audio started.
I guess I'll know soon enough!