Saron Yitbarek, writing on the WebKit blog:

In Safari Technology Preview 247, we’re introducing the Safari MCP server — a Model Context Protocol server for web developers that makes your web development and debugging workflow faster and more powerful. We know agents are increasingly integral to the coding process and the Safari MCP server gives your agent the ability to know how your code actually renders in the browser by connecting it to a Safari browser window.

Any MCP-compatible client can connect to the Safari MCP server. By connecting your agent to a Safari browser window, your agent can emulate what your users experience, giving it the information it needs to debug more autonomously, like access to the DOM, network requests, screenshots, and console output.

Importantly:

The Safari MCP server runs entirely on your local machine and makes no network calls of its own. It also does not have access to your personal information in Safari (e.g. AutoFill or other browser activity). When it captures page content, screenshots, or console logs, that data goes directly to the agent you’re running — not to Apple. What happens to that data from there depends on the agent and model you’re using. As with any agent you give access to your browser, only use ones you trust.

For the past few months, I’ve been using Google Chrome on my MacBook Pro and Mac Studio not because I like the browser (in fact, I really dislike Chrome’s text rendering and UI), but simply because it was the best option for agents. In Codex specifically, between Playwright, Chrome Dev Tools, and OpenAI’s own Chrome extension, I could kick off research tasks (such as vacation planning and booking a hotel) that involved a browser directly from my iPhone, letting Codex drive the research on my remote Mac.

Safari in Codex.

Now, thanks to Safari’s new MCP server, I no longer have to use Chrome on desktop and can return to a unified browser setup across all my devices. Even better: it actually looks like Apple shipped the most ergonomic browser MCP for agents to date. The MCP server has dedicated tools for page extraction (including getting webpages as Markdown, based on WebKit’s own conversion pipeline), evaluating JavaScript, DOM interactions (clicking, scrolling, resizing the viewport for mobile screens, etc.), taking screenshots, and more. I set this up immediately in Codex, and I also asked Codex about comparing Safari’s MCP to its own Chrome extension and the older Playwright. The verdict: although Chrome has a richer API with Chrome Dev Tools when it comes to network requests, Codex actually preferred Apple’s leaner, more direct approach for letting an agent drive and debug a browser.

I’m really happy to see folks at Apple embrace agentic tools: between the new MCP capabilities of Xcode and now this, it looks like Apple’s software (on the Mac, of course) is becoming more and more approachable by people who are working in new ways thanks to agents. Whether you’re a web developer or tinkerer, I highly recommend checking out what Apple has released in Safari Technology Preview. More of this, please.

Over at Snazzy Labs, Quinn Nelson has a great in-depth look at the changes coming to Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit with macOS 27 this fall. Paired with Metal 4, it’s a real leap over what’s possible today, and Nelson showcases the difference well.

Thanks to the upcoming update, Nelson was able to use CrossOver, a Windows-to-Mac compatibility layer that allows PC games to be played on a Mac, to spotlight some impressive numbers on games ranging from Red Dead Redemption to the recently released 007 First Light.

Not all games Nelson tried showed the same leap in performance, but that’s true on compatibility layers like Proton on the Steam Deck, too. What’s remarkable is that it’s all done in software and as Nelson points out, the advent of coding agents like Codex and Claude may help bring more PC games to Mac using the Game Porting Toolkit by reducing the porting costs.

Nelson also makes a pitch for an Apple gaming device. I agree with him that more than ever, the pieces, right down to a hardware-focused incoming CEO, are all there for such a device, and I remain optimistic. However, I’ve made the case for such a device for years now to no avail. Still, whether or not Apple builds gaming hardware itself, watch the full video above. It’s a fantastic view of how far the Mac has come as a potential gaming platform since the advent of Apple silicon.

One of Apple’s tentpole features at WWDC was a ground-up makeover to Screen Time that’s designed to give parents more granular and reliable control over their kids’ device use. I got a demo of the changes while I was at Apple Park, and they’re extensive. That’s good because Screen Time has been broken in a variety of ways for a while and isn’t very flexible.

My first impressions of the changes have been positive, but it’s worth noting that I don’t use Screen Time myself and my kids are grown. Screen Time wasn’t even available when it would have been useful to my family.

However, I do remember well the days when my kids were little, and so I sympathize with Patrick Klepek who wants more. Klepek gives Apple credit for improvements in Screen Time’s UI, but wants more:

But to crystalize my requests to Apple for the future:
- A dedicated Screen Time app
- The ability to invoke Siri or other shortcut-like features to lock devices
- Granular control over extending screen time to accommodate specific requests

I’d add another request that one of the journalists made during our demo that made a lot of sense. Like me, he has three kids and wondered if he could set up a baseline set of Screen Time rules and then copy them to his other kids, making age-appropriate tweaks for each kid. Apple said that isn’t currently possible, but it’s the sort of practical, reality-based suggestion that the company should prioritize. Being a parent means a lot of things, but it shouldn’t mean being an IT manager too. For tools like Screen Time to be adopted, they need to be easy, flexible, and powerful. That’s a tough combination, but I hope it’s been made a priority internally at Apple that will result in ongoing improvements to Screen Time during this OS cycle and beyond.

Photo editing is getting some of the most interesting Apple Intelligence features this fall. At WWDC, Tyler Stalman interviewed Jon McCormack, Apple’s Vice President of Camera and Photos Software Engineering, and Della Huff, the company’s Senior Manager of Camera and Photos Product Marketing, in a video that covers Spatial Reframing, Extend, and an improved Clean Up tool, along with demos of each:

The interview goes into depth on each feature and how they’re enhanced by the integration with Apple’s improved Private Cloud Compute models, sharing nuggets like the fact that Spatial Reframing of photos is possible even if an image is taken with a single-lens iPhone and the fact that Apple includes metadata in generatively edited photos identifying the use of AI and will add SynthID watermarking, a technology developed by Google, to AI-edited photos later this year.

I’m not a fan of wholesale image generation, which is why I appreciate the thoughtful approach Apple is taking with these photo editing features. The changes are at the margins of the photo and identified as edited using AI.