Browsers Explained: Chrome, Safari and Edge

You sit down to look something up, and there it is: a little coloured circle, or a blue compass, or a swirl of green and red. Someone may have told you to “open your browser”, and you weren’t quite sure which thing that was. You are not alone in that.

A browser is simply the program you use to look at websites. That’s all it is. The confusing part is that there are several of them, with names like Chrome, Safari and Edge, and they all do roughly the same job. Let’s clear that up so you know what you’re looking at. If you are helping an older parent get online, see our wider guide to helping a parent go online.

What a browser actually does

Think of a browser as a window onto the internet. You type in where you want to go, or search for it, and the browser fetches that page and shows it to you. Reading the news, checking your bank, looking up a recipe, watching a clip the grandchildren sent: all of that happens inside a browser.

It helps to keep two words apart. A browser is the app. A search engine, like Google, is the thing you use inside it to find pages. People often say “Google” when they mean the browser, which is part of why this all feels muddled. They are related, but not the same.

The main three, and who uses them

Here is the simple version, so you can recognise yours.

Browser	Where you’ll find it
Safari (blue compass)	Built into iPhones, iPads and Mac computers. Apple’s own.
Chrome (red, yellow, green and blue circle)	Google’s browser. Common on Android phones and many Windows computers.
Edge (blue and green swirl)	Microsoft’s browser, built into Windows computers.

You might also hear about Firefox, an older and well-respected browser that some people prefer. It works just as well. But the three above are the ones you are most likely to meet, because they come already installed.

Does it matter which one I use?

For everyday use, no, not really. They all show the same internet. A website looks much the same in Safari as it does in Chrome. So if a relative says “you should switch to Chrome”, you can gently say no thank you and carry on with the one you know. Familiarity is worth more than any small difference between them.

The one thing worth doing is sticking to a single browser most of the time. It will remember your favourite sites and your saved passwords, so the more you use the same one, the more it helps you. Hopping between several just means none of them gets to know you.

A few handy things every browser can do

Whichever browser you have, these small features make life easier:

• Bookmarks, or favourites: save a site you visit often so you can return with one tap, no typing.
• Make text bigger: pinch two fingers apart on a touchscreen, or hold Ctrl and press the + key on a computer.
• Tabs: keep more than one page open at once, like having two newspapers spread on the table.

None of these are essential. But the favourites one in particular is worth learning, because it saves you typing out long web addresses every time.

Staying safe while you browse

The browser isn’t where most trouble starts. The trouble usually arrives as a link in a text or email that leads somewhere it shouldn’t. So the most useful habit is to pause before tapping a link from a message you weren’t expecting. Our guides on how to check if a link is safe and how to spot a fake website cover the few quick checks that catch nearly all of it.

One small reassurance: that little padlock symbol near the web address just means the connection is private. It’s a good sign, but on its own it doesn’t prove a site is honest, since scammers can have padlocks too. Treat it as one clue among several, not a guarantee.