How to Downgrade Safari Beta to Safari Stable on Mac

If you’re a Mac user who installed a Safari beta version on a stable version of MacOS to experiment with beta Safari features, it’s possible that you might want to downgrade the Safari beta back to a Safari stable version. This can be tricky because if you install a beta version of Safari onto MacOS, it will default to overwriting the stable version of Safari on that Mac. So what should you do in this situation, how can you downgrade from a Safari beta back to a Safari stable build on MacOS? That’s what we’re going to address in this article.

For example, lets say you installed Safari 26 beta onto MacOS Sequoia 15.6, but you find that Safari 26 beta is too buggy to use reliably, or you just don’t like it for whatever reason. But by installing the Safari 26 beta onto Sequoia, you overwrote the stable Safari build and now you’re stuck with the beta, right? Wrong! There are a few different ways to return the Safari stable version to your Mac, as we’ll show you here.

Note that while you can downgrade from a Safari beta version to a Safari stable version using these methods, you can not downgrade from a new version of Safari to an older one.

Method 1: Install the Latest Safari Available for MacOS Manually to Downgrade from Safari Beta

This is an interesting trick and it works to downgrade from Safari beta to Safari stable builds, and that is to download the latest available Safari version for MacOS. The tricky part is that for the current MacOS version, new versions of Safari are bundled as MacOS updates. So instead we will intentionally download the latest version of Safari for the prior generation of MacOS, as those do not receive the same updates.

Continuing the example above of downgrading from Safari 26 beta on Sequoia to Safari 18.6 stable on Sequoia, we’ll be actually downloading and installing the full version of Safari 18.6 for macOS Sonoma, the prior system software release. And yes it installs, and yes it works fine.

Method 2: Run a MacOS Installer to Reinstall Stable Safari

Inconvenient, but reinstalling the same version of MacOS that you currently have installed, will also reinstall the stable version of Safari that is packaged with it. One way to do this is by simply downloading and installing the MacOS installer that matches your current system software version, and running it again. Backup your Mac before you begin this process.

You can find all available versions of MacOS installers to download here if you need to go this route.

You can also reinstall MacOS by using Recovery Mode on an Apple Silicon Mac.

Method 3: Revert with Time Machine

If you make regular Time Machine backups, restoring from a backup made prior to installing the Safari beta will restore the original version of Safari you had installed.

Method 4: Install Available macOS System Software Updates

This particular approach only works if you have an available system software update for your current version of MacOS, but simply installing an available MacOS system software update that is available should also restore a non-beta version of Safari to the Mac. This works because Safari almost always updated with point release updates to MacOS, so it will be installed as part of this update.

For example, if you’re currently running MacOS Sequoia 15.5 with Safari 26 beta, by simply updating to MacOS Sequoia 15.6, you should also end up with Safari 18.6 installed on the Mac after the update has completed.

Option 5: Use Safari Technology Preview

This is a workaround but if you can’t get Safari beta downgraded successfully, your next bet is to run the Safari Technology Preview, which is sort of like an advanced beta version of current gen Safari, but typically quite stable.

You can download the latest version of Safari Technology Preview from Apple from Apple here at the Safari developer resources page. After you download and install Safari Tech Preview, a second version of Safari will install on the Mac (named Safari Technology Preview) with a purple icon instead of blue icon, and will update through Software Update just like other system updates become available.

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Have you ever found yourself trying to downgrade from a Safari beta version to a Safari stable build, on a non-beta MacOS release? Which method did you use to restore a stable version of Safari on your Mac? Did you use another approach? Share your experiences in the comments below.