Apple’s MacBooks are among the laptops with the best battery life on the market. However, buying a MacBook doesn’t guarantee you’ll experience good battery life because it all depends on how you use it. If you use a laptop to play video games, it won’t last as long as it would for someone using it for basic browsing. For those who use their Apple laptops primarily to get work done in the browser, the company has shared a key tip on how you can extend the battery life of your MacBook by up to five hours. According to Apple’s latest switch-to-Safari campaign, the Cupertino-based tech giant says you can gain up to five more hours of battery life while streaming video on your MacBook by simply ditching Chrome for its in-house browser.
Apple’s test involved streaming a 1080p video while connected to Wi-Fi on a pre-release version of Safari 27.0 and Chrome v151.0.7922.76. The test was conducted on a 15-inch M5-powered MacBook Air with 16 GB of unified memory and 512 GB SSD storage, running a pre-release version of macOS Golden Gate. That said, this doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get five more hours of battery life if you switch from Chrome to Safari because there are some caveats to Apple’s test.
First, Apple only conducted the test on a specific MacBook Air configuration, so we can’t apply the same results to the rest of the company’s laptops. Even Apple says battery life will vary depending on configuration. Second, the comparison was only between Chrome and Apple’s own browser, so if you use another browser and then switch to Safari, your mileage may vary.
Chrome’s downsides are real, but Apple stands to gain from the switch
The internet is full of articles outlining the reasons Chrome might not be the best browser to use. Some of its major downsides are well-documented; Apple has also outlined some of them in its current switch-to-Safari campaign. One of the most critical is privacy, as Chrome lets third-party trackers follow you around the web. Chrome is also known for its memory-hogging behavior, and Apple’s testing has also shown Safari to be faster. But beyond these three, there are other reasons why Safari is a better browser than Chrome.
That said, Apple has legitimate reasons to promote Safari’s efficiency and privacy features. However, even with that, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the company stands to benefit if it convinces more MacBook owners to stay within its ecosystem. Safari is the company’s proprietary browser, and if more MacBook users switch to it, it will strengthen Apple’s position in browser market share and reinforce its control over the Mac experience.
According to the latest data from StatcounterGoogle’s Chrome has a strong foothold in the worldwide browser market — it held an estimated 66.36% share as of September 2026. Safari, on the other hand, was a distant second with only 18.27% market share. Perhaps the latest campaign is an attempt by Apple to help close that gap. In short, you might want to take Apple’s word with a grain of salt.