Apple has released Safari 27.0, and it might be the browser’s biggest release in years. The feature count alone jumped from 58 in the first beta back in June to 83 in the shipping version, and that does not count the hundreds of smaller fixes packed in alongside them.
WebKit published the full rundown on its blog, and the team says this year’s release notes are the longest they have ever put out. The list is topped by something unusual for a browser update. Safari 27.0 is expected to ship with a built-in server made specifically for AI coding agents.
Safari MCP Puts AI Coding Agents Inside Your Browser
Safari 27.0 ships with its own MCP server, giving tools like Claude Code and Codex direct access to a running browser window. Instead of an agent guessing what a page looks like from a description, it can now see the actual DOM, read network requests, capture screenshots, and pull console output while it works.
WebKit lists five specific things an agent can do once it is connected:
- See how code renders in Safari
- Verify user states in forms, checkout flows, and selections
- Compare computed styles and layout against other browsers
- Test for accessibility issues like missing labels and poor contrast
- Analyze performance using navigation timing and resource load data
The server runs entirely on the local machine. WebKit says it makes no network calls of its own, cannot read personal Safari data, and sends captured data straight to the agent running it rather than to Apple. Turning it on requires one setting change. Open Safari, go to Settings, then Developer, and check “Allow remote automation and external agents.”
Developers using Claude Code can connect it with a single terminal command:
claude mcp add safari-mcp -- "/usr/bin/safaridriver" --mcpCodex users run the same command with codex in place of claude, and any other MCP-compatible agent can point at safaridriver through a standard mcp.json config file. Apple already brought Claude into Xcode for native app development, and Safari MCP extends that same idea to the browser side of web development.
844 Bug Fixes Make This the Biggest Quality Release Yet
WebKit calls quality the real headline of Safari 27.0, ahead of any single new feature. The team announced 525 fixes at WWDC back in June, then kept going. The final count for the shipping release is 844.
WebKit’s own breakdown of the release shows resolved issues make up 86 percent of everything that changed in Safari 27.0, with improvements to existing features accounting for another 11 percent. Brand new features make up just 2 percent of the release, and deprecations sit under 1 percent.
Several fixes target real compatibility problems people were running into. A bug that broke Hindi InScript typing in Google Docs is fixed. So is one that made images vanish from search results on a restaurant reservation site, and another that misrendered Pahawh Hmong text on Wikipedia. WebKit also rebuilt the ES module loader from scratch to fix long-standing issues with top-level await, and gave CSS Zoom a full rewrite.
New HTML Elements Bring 3D Models and Restyled Dropdowns to Safari
Customizable Select turns the standard <select> dropdown into a fully restylable component. Adding appearance: base-select switches an element over to new default styles and unlocks custom pseudo-elements like ::picker-icon and ::checkmark, along with the ability to insert HTML content inside individual options.
select,
select::picker(select) {
appearance: base-select
}The <model> element, which shipped in visionOS a year ago, now works in Safari on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. It behaves like <video> or <img> but embeds an interactive 3D object instead, complete with support for multiple source formats and a fallback image.
<model src="mallet.usdz"></model>Scroll anchoring is on by default across the release, stopping the page from jumping when ads, images, or comments load in above what a person is currently reading. SVG alone picked up 66 individual fixes in Safari 27.0, including a full end-to-end review of the SMIL animation engine.
