Apple forgot the “Compact” tab layout in macOS Safari

I’m not in a hurry to update my Apple devices to the 26 “crop” of OSs, but Safari on macOS… why not?

Every year Apple ships the big update to its browser for older macOS releases. It’s an exception to the rule of updating native apps only with the OS. The list of changes is always long and this year’s is no different.

Unfortunately, Safari 26 is broken for the five people who use the “compact” tab layout. And yes, I am (or was) one of them.

The compact tab layout was introduced in 2021, in macOS 12. Complaints were so loud Apple rolled back and kept the old layout (renamed “separate”) as the default, relegating compact as an option in the browser settings:

I always used and liked compact. Because I don’t keep many tabs open, they never got tiny and it also saved vertical screen real state.

When I updated Safari earlier today, I quickly noticed mouse clicks on the active tab don’t work. You can’t select the URL, close the tab, or reload the page using the mouse:

Also, the window “traffic light” buttons show a gray outline, and some extension icons are blurry. It feels like no one at Apple even remembered Safari’s compact mode existed.

Others (the other four people using compact mode) reported the same issue.

Resigned, I switched to separate mode and everything worked again. It’s weird. It feels like I’m using a different browser.

Shortly before publishing this post, I discovered Apple removed Compact mode from Safari in macOS 26 Tahoe. Cowards.