I’m all for experimenting with new ways to tackle an old UI problem. This is compounded even worse with websites like Pitchfork that have a bottom-oriented navigation design - you now have 3 different bottom navigations vying for attention (website, Safari URL bar, iOS home bar.) The iOS home bar and Safari’s URL bar are in close proximity with each other, such that swiping in the wrong spot can give you an unintended result. The bottom of the screen is now rather overloaded.The URL itself is also substantially truncated to make space for all the buttons. The buttons around the URL field are crammed tightly together and easy to accidentally tap.Toggling to private browsing mode is especially clunky, now requiring multiple taps inside the new tab group options. Formerly quick interactions have become fiddly or more complicated.It’s also located in the space where you’re commonly scrolling or tapping on things. This is because a floating element requires extra empty space above and below it, so it draws more visual attention than something anchored to an edge of the screen. The floating URL bar sometimes feels “in the way.” It’s visually dominant in a way that the old design was not.Tab management is significantly improved.There are a few direct benefits to the new design: Safari now supports tab groups, and has a whole new tab management interface.Swiping the URL bar left or right moves between tabs.Safari’s top and bottom toolbars are now combined into a single floating URL bar, which is elevated above the page content.All UI for interacting with web pages has been moved from the top of the screen to the bottom.

Pitchfork has its own bottom-oriented menu which gets into the mix here.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Safari in iOS 14 and in iOS 15 beta 4, using Pitchfork as an example website with the content mostly blocked out, so you can see the differences. It will probably be out of date after more betas ship. Apple has been iterating on this in the open, so I thought it might be fun to write up a little critique, as if I was working on this feature and trying to decide if it’s production-ready or not. I’ve been running the iOS 15 beta releases on my iPhone, and the most noticeable change is a major redesign of the core UI in Safari.

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