Anti-Tracking Guide

Safari Private Browsing protections

What WebKit says Safari Private Browsing 2.0 adds: fingerprinting noise, link tracking protection, tracker blocking and extension limits, with the 2024 source.

Official source: WebKit, Private Browsing 2.0. Verified on

1 min read · Review scheduled for 2027-01-20

Contents

In short

  • Source: the WebKit blog post "Private Browsing 2.0", dated 16 July 2024 (WebKit).
  • Fingerprinting: WebKit says it adds slight randomness to canvas, WebGL and WebAudio data and sets some screen and window measurements to fixed values, so devices are harder to tell apart.
  • Link tracking: it removes known tracking query parameters before navigation and hides query strings and fragments from third-party scripts on the page you land on.
  • Trackers: it blocks requests to domains flagged as trackers by both DuckDuckGo and EasyPrivacy, including disguised (CNAME-cloaked) ones.
  • Extensions: those that can read page content or history are off by default in Private Browsing.

What this does and does not change

  • Fingerprinting noise makes your canvas or audio result different from the real one. It is the same idea Brave calls farbling.
  • Fixed screen values mean a site reading your window size gets a standard answer, so your exact window is not a clue.
  • Blocking known trackers only works for domains on the lists. New trackers can get through.

Limits

The post describes Private Browsing. We did not read Apple's pages for ordinary Safari windows, so we make no claim about them. The post is from July 2024; later Safari versions may differ.

Compare

See browsers compared for the others.

Outside this page: We did not test Safari. The check on the home page shows what your browser reveals, which you can compare in a normal and a private window.