Apple has released Safari 15.1 as an update to the Safari 15 release that came with macOS Monterey. The new version allows users on macOS Big Sur and macOS Catalina to experience the features that are available on macOS Monterey through Safari 15. It also reintroduces the earlier tab bar design that was available prior to the Safari 15 release. Users can, however, manually switch to the new compact tab bar design. Safari 15.1 also includes security fixes to patch certain known loopholes and vulnerabilities.

Unlike Safari 15, the Safari 15.1 release by default comes with the existing tab bar design where you will see tabs below the address bar. You can however manually switch to the compact tab bar design by going to Preferences > Tabs from the Safari menu.

Safari 15.1 by default comes with the previous tab bar design

The new compact tab bar was originally aimed at providing more room for Web browsing by combining active tabs with the address bar. It also allowed tabs to take the colour of the site you are visiting. However, the interface did not please many macOS users. Apple has, therefore, gone back to the earlier tab bar design for Safari 15.1.

In addition to the interface-level changes, Safari 15.1 brings security fixes for four vulnerabilities reported by security researchers. These vulnerabilities exist in WebKit and are listed as CVE-2021-30887, CVE-2021-30888, CVE-2021-30889, and CVE-2021-30890, as detailed on the Apple Support page.

You can download Safari 15.1 on your Mac running on macOS Big Sur or macOS Catalina by going to System Preferences > Updates. It also comes preloaded with macOS Monterey 12.0.1 that Apple released for its existing Mac machines earlier this week.