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Having been caught out recently when a web site I launched displayed perfectly on IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari on Windows but was corrupted when viewed using Safari on the Mac (by a potential customer), I need to start testing how my sites look when viewed on a Mac.

Problem is, I don't own a Mac.

I've tried BrowsrCamp, which claims to provide VNC access to a Mac with lots of browsers installed, but after finding it unreliable (so far, it's worked 1 day in the last 5) I need another solution.

Any suggestions?

SimonF
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    You can also try your page on a WebKit-based browser such as Epiphany. Obviously this doesn't remove the need for testing on Safari, but can be useful for replicating many of Safari's quirks with a simple and local environment. – user2580621 Aug 22 '17 at 17:33
  • Check out playwright https://joyofcode.xyz/test-your-site-in-every-browser – Valera Kvip Feb 04 '23 at 14:52

9 Answers9

109

The best site to test website and see them realtime on MAC Safari is by using

Browserstack

They have like 25 free minutes of first time testing and then 10 free mins each day..You can even test your pages from your local PC by using their WEB TUNNEL Feature

I tested 7 to 8 pages in browserstack...And I think they have some java debugging tool in the upper right corner that is great help

Dave
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Muhammad Ahsan
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    Yes Browserstack is a very good one, you log in to a live OS with browser. Very handy. – Jeff Clayton Dec 28 '15 at 15:06
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    I tried them for the first time this morning, and even though I signed up for their free trial, it still looked like they wanted money before they let me try anything on Safari under OSX. – Michael Scheper Nov 07 '16 at 18:23
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    Just tried it and at the moment the latest Safari version you can use for free is 7.1 which is not very useful for me. But I have to say, the feature for local testing is nice. – Grochni Jan 09 '17 at 13:31
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    Seems like a solid solution for general testing, but I was needing to test a performance issue on Safari. Since this streams a virtual desktop I couldn't really tell where the bottleneck was. –  Apr 18 '17 at 15:12
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    Don't allow testing of MAC apps for free – Nate Anderson Mar 02 '18 at 20:47
  • Browserstack iOS device does not load images or javascript… Makes it useless for me… – Kissaki Jun 02 '18 at 15:08
  • "latest Safari version you can use for free is 7.1" - still the case, this is useless for me – gaspar Sep 05 '19 at 13:13
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    *Apple* should pay us for *Browserstack* since it eventually helps them look better when apps have less bugs on *their* "special" browsers. I need to maintain many open-source projects and **don't want to spend my own money** on *browserstack*... – vsync Apr 09 '20 at 14:16
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    How to get those 25 minutes of testing? I only get 1 minute uninterrupted (which is totally useless) unless I purchase a plan. – Evgeny A. May 15 '20 at 08:03
  • @EvgenyA. If you are working on an open source project, they have an option where you put your git repo url and you get much more time for testing – Jesse Reza Khorasanee May 29 '20 at 02:23
  • Does anyone know how reliable Browserstack is for mimicing the behaviour with regards to more the functionality of the browser For example, if I wanted to test a website on a desktop version of Safari where I needed to play some audio from a HTML5 player, would it be expected that the audio would play in the same way in Browserstack as it would on a real MAC? – DigM Aug 14 '20 at 09:08
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    You can buy a new mac-mini for the annual price they ask !!! – Thanasis Dec 25 '21 at 09:12
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For my case (a small, personal project) https://www.lambdatest.com/ was very helpful. Free tier allows for 6 sessions per month.

Michał Gacka
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    Free tier doesn't allow MacOS, so pretty useless. Also looks suspiciously similar to BrowserStack, mentioned in another answer – Greg Woods Jun 05 '19 at 11:41
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    @GregWoods They do have MacOS and Safari... but NOT the latest version - you have to pay for that... and the latest versions are the ones full of bugs, so not good. – Martin Zvarík Apr 24 '20 at 14:39
  • Lambda test is great and they have a cheap "one off" plan if you only need a few hours. Yes BrowserStack is suspiciously like Lambdatest. – Tony O'Hagan Apr 24 '21 at 07:25
25

Meanwhile, MacOS High Sierra can be run in VirtualBox (on a PC) for Free. It's not really fast but it works for general browser testing.

How to setup see here: https://www.howtogeek.com/289594/how-to-install-macos-sierra-in-virtualbox-on-windows-10/

I'm using this for a while now and it works quite well

Marcel Haldemann
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    Also worth mentioning that, using this method, you can run Safari 11 without actually installing the OS (which takes ages), by clicking on the "Get Help Online" option on the macOS Utilities menu that comes up when you first boot the base system. – hackel Apr 20 '18 at 21:38
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    The main issue with this is that you still need a Mac to get the ISO. – SeinopSys Nov 29 '18 at 08:02
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    @SeinopSys ..you don't... you can download the ISO, see my answer below – Martin Zvarík Feb 26 '19 at 17:06
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    you can use vagrant box as well https://app.vagrantup.com/ramsey/boxes/macos-high-sierra – Arek Kostrzeba Aug 31 '20 at 12:14
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You don't have to pay for those online service and still be able to use latest Safari for free with these choices:

A) Install VMware

Use Google to find VMware + free MacOs ISO image. This solution is significantly faster than VirtualBox.

B) Install VirtualBox and download free MacOS High Sierra image

See tutorial here: https://www.wikigain.com/install-macos-high-sierra-virtualbox-windows/

Use these vbox settings to increase resolution and memory, but it is still very laggy and slow:

cd "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\"
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" VBoxInternal2/EfiGraphicsResolution 1920x1080
VBoxManage modifyvm "macOS" --vram 256
Martin Zvarík
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    The mac osx downloads are being stored on someone's google drive account? Doesn't seem very legit? – jmunsch Jan 22 '20 at 18:09
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    While I wouldn't recommend downloading an image from a random Drive account, there are other ways to obtain the image (e.g., https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201475, though apparently you need to find someone with a Mac). I personally haven't had a good experience with web based services, so suggesting running Mac OS in a VM is a legit solution in jurisdictions where fair use trumps Apple's draconian SLAs. – imolit Jan 28 '20 at 15:09
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    The video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7E_UqgCFbQ appears to have been taken down. – thisgeek May 29 '20 at 16:54
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If it's a major concern to start doing a lot of testing on a Mac, then I would definitely suggest buying a second hand Mac, or perhaps building a Hackintosh. The former gets you up and running quickly, the latter gives you a lot of power for the same price.

For just the odd piece of testing, running OS X in VMWare on your current PC is a cheaper option.

Coxy
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    Please note that Apple's EULA forbids installation of OS X on any machine other than a Mac, and that US courts have judged Hackintosh are nothing else than a violation of Apple's IP. I don't think it is a good idea to encourage piracy on SO. – KPM Aug 16 '12 at 00:36
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    See at https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1010.pdf on page 3: "H. Other Use Restrictions. The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so." – Steffen Nov 18 '14 at 12:13
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    The situation looks different in EU and Australia, and OP lives in Australia according to his profile. – Chris Hasiński Aug 04 '15 at 08:22
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    @KPM In the EU the laws override that EULA. So it should be legal here. We can even sell OEM Windows legally if we remove it from the original machine. – inf3rno Jun 26 '18 at 09:05
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    From what I can tell, you cannot run the latest Safari on older macs. Apple really seem to be embracing the built-in obsolescence thing. – Greg Woods Jun 05 '19 at 11:46
  • @GregWoods System 10.13 will run on most anything back to 2009/10. I don't think any other browser will run on operating systems older than that. – Coxy Jun 06 '19 at 00:02
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Unfortunately you cannot run MacOS X on anything but a genuine Mac.

MacOS X Server however can be run in VMWare. A stopgap solution would be to install it inside a VM. But you should be aware that MacOS X Server and MacOS X are not exactly the same, and your testing is not going to be exactly what the user has. Not to mention the $499 price tag.

Simplest way is to buy yourself a cheap mac mini or a laptop with a broken screen used on ebay, plug it onto your network and access it via VNC to do your testing.

eric
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    Even OS X Server can only be run in VMWare if the physical machine hosting it is a Mac. You cannot run OS X Server inside VMWare on a PC. – KPM Aug 16 '12 at 00:24
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    This is untrue, OSX can be both dual-booted and run via VMWare (which is even easier, so long as you don't require much power at all). Some systems may not be capable, but most are. – Deji May 25 '16 at 11:22
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    Right, I'll buy it if you'll send me money – Sergey Maksimenko Jun 06 '16 at 06:50
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    @KPM - false information. I run OSX on my windows vmware software without a problem. You just need to know how to do it. – vsync Dec 21 '16 at 21:03
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    @vsync I'm not talking of what is technically possible. I'm talking of what is legally possible. Doing what you do means you violate the terms of your license. Pure and simple. – KPM Dec 25 '16 at 00:00
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    @KPM -[You did not just say that...](https://media.giphy.com/media/6OWIl75ibpuFO/giphy.gif) it's in Apple's best interests to have as many websites compatible with their shitty browser, therefor they should be grateful for any of our **wasted** time, doing "illegal" debugging with VMs – vsync Dec 25 '16 at 11:16
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    @KPM "May" would've been clear to use in this case instead of "can" and would've removed all ambiguity. – EugZol Nov 06 '18 at 16:52
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Amazon AWS recently launched macOS EC2 instances.

As of now (Dec 2020) they are pretty pricey, you have to reserve them minimum for 24h.

You can connect to the instance via VNC (sample guide for connecting from Windows) and test your browser.

Altair7852
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3

https://turbo.net/ offers a browser sandbox in which containerised virtual machines run browser sessions for you. I tried it with Safari on my Windows development machine and it seems to work very well.

Emmanuel Mathi-Amorim
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Ben Curthoys
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1

Litmus may help you. It will take screenshots of your webpage(s) in a wide variety of browsers so you can make sure that your site works in all of them. A free alternative (Litmus is a paid service) is Browsershots, but you do get what you pay for. (In some screenshots that Browershots returns, the browser hasn't yet finished loading the webpage...)

Of course, as other people have suggested, buying a Mac is also a good solution (and may be better, depending on the kind of testing you need to do), because then you can test your website yourself in any of the browsers that run under Mac OS X or Windows.

Steve Harrison
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