Safari is adopting an extensions API similar to Firefox’s WebExtensions

It&#x27;s still gimped.<p>No blocking requests.<p>&quot;Unlimited&quot; storage (which is necessary for most non-trivial extensions) is actually limited to 10MB.<p>You&#x27;re stuck in Apple&#x27;s app store which is equally as draconian as Chrome&#x27;s and Firefox&#x27;s but now you have to pay $99&#x2F;year.<p>No IndexedDB.<p>The extensions aren&#x27;t usable on mobile.<p>I care little for Safari&#x27;s users if I have to deal with all of this.

Apple had a great opportunity to natively support web extensions in Safari. Instead they choose to do it through the app extensions System. Meaning a developer needs to have and pay for Apple dev account. They need to have a Mac to port and compile it. They have to sign it. And then maintain it.<p>This will certainly affect adoption. Forcing an open standard into a closed system seems intuitively wrong.<p>But at least kudos to Apple for recognizing the need for webextensions support.

I don’t have a lot of hopes that this will satisfy my needs. I just want these extensions in Safari, to start with:<p>* uBlock Origin (confirmed as of now as not supported, and unlikely to be supported in the future either, with content blocking handled at the browser engine level)<p>* Privacy Possum or Privacy Badger<p>* Session Buddy or some good Session saving extension

I really wanted to stick with Safari a little over two years ago when I moved off of Google products. It was (is) snappy and battery conversant. Beyond poor extension support, I realized the absolutely most important features to me in a browser are password, bookmark, and history synchronization. Since I use Windows and macOS, Safari was out of the question (RIP Windows edition of it). Thankfully in the last year Firefox has mad leaps and bounds on performance and battery life consumption on macOS (on Windows it is fantastic).<p>Also at the end of the day, you have what I believe is the most unlimited ad-blocking experience on Firefox compared to Chrome, Chromium, and Safari.

What does this mean for Ad-blockers like UOrigin which were removed after Apple disabled the API they used?

As someone who works at a company with a web extension, one big thing I care about is automated deployment. We have automated releases with Chrome and Firefox (although it has to use Puppeteer). The new Edgium recently wanted to get us to publish but I found zero docs on potential automation so that&#x27;s a blocker. Wonder what process Safari has to offer here?

Does this mean Safari may get the React or Redux extensions? That’s all I care about.