This recreated Mac OS X Snow Leopard Safari reminds us of the good old days

Safari 5 Imore Screenshot (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

Developer Zane Kleinberg has recreated Safari 5 for use on modern macOS systems.
Safari 5 was part of Mac OS X Snow Leopard and now you can run it on anything — even the macOS Monterey beta.

Developer Zane Kleinberg has brought Mac OS X Snow Leopard's Safari 5 back from the dead, and you can install it on your own Mac right now. Safari 5 was pretty great, and now you can run it on modern Macs, too.

With so much talk about the Safari 15 update in macOS Monterey, using the Snow Leopard version — lovingly recreated in SwiftUI — is a breath of fresh air. Taps look like tabs and the old search box is back, too. This might be the best Mac browser available today!

So with all the debate going around with the new Safari in Monterey, I decided to try a little experiment and recreate Snow Leopard's version of Safari in SwiftUI. Gotta say, It’s so much fun to use! You can download it at https://t.co/73oPh0YMNw. pic.twitter.com/SEGWg7xuoeSo with all the debate going around with the new Safari in Monterey, I decided to try a little experiment and recreate Snow Leopard's version of Safari in SwiftUI. Gotta say, It’s so much fun to use! You can download it at https://t.co/73oPh0YMNw. pic.twitter.com/SEGWg7xuoe— Zane (@zzanehip) July 26, 2021 July 26, 2021

Anyone who wants to take the new-old Safari for a spin can download it for free from GitHub now. From the icon to the way the blue loading bar appears when you open a website, this recreation of Safari 5 hits me right in the nostalgia feels. Thanks to 9to5Mac for bringing it to my attention this morning!

I'm not feeling brave enough to run the iMore CMS in Safari 5, but a few minutes of browsing the web didn't present any huge problems. Is it as quick as Safari 15 on the macOS Monterey beta? No, not really. But it also means I can tell which tab is active at a glance, so there's that!

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.