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I'm running OSX 10.6.8 with Safari 5.01 with my main user account, which is an admin account.
I would like to do some testing with Safari 5.1 before I fully commit to it.

Can I install Safari 5.1 in another user account (non-admin) and keep the Safari 5.05 functional in my admin account?
Can I just install it in the ~/Applications directory of the non-admin user?

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  • As you see - there are several ways to go about this. I'm curious why you are looking to stick with Safari rather than use the nightly webkit development build for testing. It's much less hassle than maintaining two versions of safari.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Sep 13, 2011 at 15:16

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The person behind Multi-Safari has documented the procedure to create a Safari application with a self-contained WebKit framework here.

Basically it involves duplicating the Safari application, opening the contents and creating a Frameworks folder inside, copying the Framework from /System/Library/Frameworks and then performing some jiggery-pokery to get the application to prefer to use the self-contained framework over the one in the Library folder.

(I decided not to copy his instructions word for word, as his website didn't use Creative Commons.)

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  • Well done - I was looking for someone who documented this. Thanks so much for this link.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Sep 13, 2011 at 15:17
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Why don't you install a Webkit beta? It will be similar to 5.1 (or probably 5.2!) and you can install it alongside your older version of Safari.

You can get it here:

http://nightly.webkit.org/

In case you haven't encountered them before these betas are the truly cutting edge versions of Safari as it is developed.

TBH I have been using 5.1 since the Dev betas (months ago!) and have found them very stable and fast - better than 5.0 IMO.

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While they don't have version 5, you could install Safari 5.1 as your main browser and then use Multi-Safari to access an earlier version. I hope this helps a little bit.

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No, I don't think so. Reason is that Safari updates replace the whole webkit framework which is a part of OS X, so you can only have one version at a time.

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  • Apple certainly doesn't make it easy to do this, but it's doable on several levels with some advanced tinkering and learning a bit how safari actually works. For many, the right answer is "NO" - but for testing it is workable without needing to maintain a whole OS with older browsers.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Sep 13, 2011 at 15:20

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