I Tried The Upgraded Safari 18 Beta Without Installing MacOS Sequoia, And You Can Too

Key Takeaways

You can install certain pre-release versions of Apple apps without upgrading the entire OS using the Apple Developer Downloads page.
Safari 18 beta 1 can be installed on macOS Ventura and Sonoma, as long as they’re updated.
New features in Safari 18 include expanded Apple Pay support, new authentication features, and a full-screen video player.

There’s always a risk that comes with installing developer beta software releases on your daily-driver. That’s why we typically advise against installing the macOS Sequoia developer beta on your great Mac, even if you’re eager to try out the new features. It’s better to wait for a public beta, or better yet, just wait until macOS 15 releases for everyone publicly in the fall. However, there is a little-known trick that lets you install certain pre-release versions of Apple apps and software packages without upgrading your entire operating system.

Apple maintains a Developer Downloads page that’s intended for software developers, and includes a variety of useful downloads in one place. It’s where you can find the official macOS Sequoia disk image file, for example, which is needed to install the OS in a virtual machine. But the site also includes downloads for certain app-specific betas, like Xcode 16 — the upcoming version of the development environment for Apple platforms. If you’re running either macOS Sonoma or macOS Ventura, you can download the first Safari 18 beta on your device without fully transitioning to macOS Sequoia.

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It’s a lower-risk way to try out the new Safari without surrendering your entire startup disk. This method of trying out Safari 18 still very much features a developer beta, and you might experience bugs and crashes as a result. However, it’s a neat way to get a taste of what’s to come in future versions of Safari and macOS.

How to install the Safari 18 beta

You can run it on macOS Ventura and macOS Sonoma

Apple made installing the developer beta versions of full OS upgrades seamless last year, building the release mechanism into the System Settings apps on multiple platforms. However, installing just the Safari 18 beta isn’t as simple. You’ll need to go to the Apple Developer Downloads (linked below) and download the Safari 18 beta 1 DMG file manually. It requires you to have an Apple Developer account to continue, but creating one is free.

The other thing to keep in mind is that even though you can download Safari 18 beta 1 on older macOS versions, they must be updated to the latest version. For example, while it will run on macOS 14 Sonoma, you must be updated to at least macOS 14.4 to complete the installation. When you’ve taken care of your macOS updates, you can follow the steps below to get started using the next version of Safari.

Navigate to the Safari 18 for macOS Sonoma and Safari 18 for macOS Ventura beta 1 listing on Apple’s Developer Downloads page.
Select the Safari 18 beta 1 download file for your operating system: choose either macOS Sonoma or macOS Ventura.
After downloading the file, double click it to open the Safari 18 beta 1 installer.
Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the Safari 18 beta 1 installation. If the installer asks you to update macOS, do that before continuing.
You’ll need to close out Safari to complete the installation. When finished, you can open Safari and use it normally.

After the Safari 18 beta finishes installing, it will become your only version of Safari. There won’t be a separate version of the app for the developer beta — it’ll completely replace your current version of the app. As such, if you don’t want to depend on a pre-release version of Safari, you might want to download macOS Sequoia in a partition or a VM as an alternative to trying the browser’s beta.

You can check to see that the installation was successful by navigating to Safari > About Safari in the menu bar when Safari is running. The version number should be 18.0

What’s new in Safari 18

The big features won’t be available until Apple Intelligence rolls out

There aren’t a lot of visual changes to Safari 18 at the moment, but there are plenty of under-the-hood performance and efficiency improvements. There’s expanded support for transferring funds via Apple Pay in Safari, as well as new authentication features throughout. For developers, there are changes to CSS, JavaScript, WebAuthn PRF, WebAPI, and Spatial Web to allow for compatibility with new features and ship bug fixes. It also adds a new full-screen video player called Video Viewer that offers a consistent way to watch videos and adjust playback controls.

However, the biggest new Safari features are bundled as part of the Apple Intelligence suite. That means they aren’t available yet, and we’re not sure whether they’ll ever be available on Safari 18 for older versions of macOS. When it eventually comes to Safari, it’ll bring a smarter Reader view that can extract key bits of information from webpages. For example, Safari might eventually be able to immediately give you the phone number and address for your hotel, saving you time that would’ve been spent scouring the website.

Without the new reader, the Safari 18 beta is a quite minor update, but it’s still cool to be able to try out the pre-release software without completely installing macOS Sequoia. Plus, you might gain access to new developer features or performance improvements.