Safari web browser bugs: A year in review

Safari web browser bugs: A year in review Safari web browser bugs: A year in review March 12 2026 68 of my WebKit Bugzilla reports were opened or changed in 2025, which you can see if you click the previous link, though you might see only 67 reports in the list, because one security bug is still not publicly accessible. 66 of those 68 reports were newly opened by me in 2025. Two reports that changed in 2025 were opened by me in 2024, one of which was fixed in 2025, and while a number of bugs I reported in 2025 were fixed in 2025—the number to be presented shortly—no bugs that I reported in 2025 have been fixed in 2026 so far. (I get the impression that Apple fixes bugs either relatively quickly or effectively never.) Two of the 66 reports I filed in 2025 were issues with the Bugzilla bug reporter itself, one was a duplicate of another report I filed in 2025, and one was closed and re-filed with Apple Feedback Assistant , thereby leaving 62 new Safari bug reports in the WebKit Bugzilla. Of those 62, I estimate that 24 have been fixed. In a few cases it’s not entirely clear whether the bug was fixed, and the Bugzilla status is not always indicative, but 24 is surely very close if not the exact number. Adding the one aforementioned bug fixed in 2025 that I reported in 2024 makes 25 of my Safari bug reports from the WebKit Bugzilla fixed in 2025. As for Feedback Assistant, 28 of my Safari-related reports were opened or changed in 2025, which unfortunately you can’t see, because that bug reporting system is closed: 6 of those 28 reports were feature requests, so I’ll set them aside for our purposes here. Of the 22 bug reports, 20 were newly opened by me in 2025. Two bugs reported by me in December 2024 were fixed by Apple in 2025. I estimate that 8 of my 20 new bug reports in Feedback Assistant were fixed by Apple in 2025, amounting to 10 total Safari bugs fixed. Combining the numbers from the two bug reporting systems, I filed 82 new Safari bug reports in 2025, about 32 of which were fixed by Apple, along with 3 bug reports from late 2024 fixed by Apple in 2025. That leaves about 50 new Safari bugs I found in 2025 that have not been fixed by Apple as of today. I have no idea how many of the 50 unfixed bugs were newly introduced into Safari in 2025. However, almost all of those 50 bugs were first discovered in 2025 by me! Admittedly, I’m a prolific finder of Safari bugs as a professional Safari extension developer . On the other hand, I don’t intentionally hunt for Safari bugs and have never received any money from Apple in bug bounties. The bugs just present themselves to me, or to my customers, who report the bugs to me, sometimes blaming my Safari extensions for those bugs. I also find nascent Safari bug reports from others by browsing Reddit; I think Apple employees should spend more time following Reddit! Of course my bug reports are not a representative sample of all Safari bugs. However, from my own perspective, Safari software quality appears to getting worse over time. The number of unfixed bugs that I’m aware of has been increasing, and the rate at which Apple fixes my bug reports is significantly lower than the rate at which I discover new Safari bugs. Apple is certainly not ignoring my Safari bug reports: around 40% of the bugs I reported in 2025 were fixed in 2025. Nonetheless, 60% were not fixed, and older bug reports—I have plenty from 2024 and earlier—are rarely addressed later.