Well, I Guess I Like Safari’s Compact Tab Bar in iPadOS 26.4 (Also: Using Vertical Tabs in Safari for iPad)

We're so back.

We’re so back.

Yours truly, back in September 2021:

In case I haven’t been clear enough above, I’ll be blunt: I don’t understand why the compact tab bar exists on iPad, and I think this design shouldn’t have shipped to customers.

My understanding is that Apple thought the benefit of removing a separate address bar, therefore saving a few vertical pixels on the page, would have made all the compromises we’ve seen so far worth the trade-offs in usability. I think that’s a wrong and mismanaged decision driven by an unmotivated pursuit of an iPhone-like design that has no place on iPad. If slightly increasing vertical space on webpages is Apple’s only argument here in favor of the compact tab bar, you tell me if it’s worth the trouble by judging from the screenshots below.

If, like me, you missed this in the release notes for the recently released iPadOS 26.4, the compact tab bar has returned to Safari for iPad after mysteriously disappearing in iPadOS 26.0. And I’m here to tell you that not only do I not despise it like I did five years ago, but I actually like this mode and have been working with Safari on my 13” iPad Pro like this for the past two weeks.

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Deals Worth Checking Out Before Amazon’s Big Spring Sale Ends

Sonos Ace Headphones, The Aqara Hub G5 Pro, and MOFT's Magnetic Wallet Stand.

Sonos Ace Headphones, The Aqara Hub G5 Pro, and MOFT’s Magnetic Wallet Stand.

Amazon’s Big Spring Sale is wrapping up tomorrow, but there is still time to take advantage of some great deals. There are deals across every category, but the smart home and headphones dominate this year’s sale, including some favorites from the MacStories Setups page such as the Aqara Hub G5 Pro outdoor camera that I reviewed last year.

Other great smart home gear on sale includes:

AirPods Pro 3 and Beats Studio Buds+.

AirPods Pro 3 and Beats Studio Buds+.

Headphones, especially Beats, are well-represented, too:

Insta360 Link 2C and WITHINGS Body Smart Scale.

Insta360 Link 2C and WITHINGS Body Smart Scale.

Finally, I wanted to highlight a few other gadgets and accessories I love that are on sale:

That’s it for another Amazon sale season. For hand-picked deals throughout the year, be sure to follow MacStories Deals on Bluesky or Mastodon.

Automatically Approve Claude Code Permissions in iMessage with Shortcuts

Automating Claude Code in iMessage.

Automating Claude Code in iMessage.

Let me start by saying that you probably shouldn’t do this. I’ve been having a surprisingly good time using Claude Code via its new iMessage channel (which is part of my attempt to recreate OpenClaw with an “OpenClaude” system, more about this here), but I find its permission prompt system fairly annoying. You see, while Claude’s Telegram integration allows you to tap on interactive buttons in a chat to grant Claude permission to do something, the iMessage integration (based on primitive AppleScript) supports no such buttons. As a result, the Claude Code team came up with a simple, but tedious idea: you have to manually type “yes” followed by a randomized authorization code every time.

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Podcast Rewind: Folding Phones, a Big Switch 2 Update, Discovering New Mac Apps, and Setups Changes

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week, Federico shares his experiences with foldable Android phones and what Apple might do for its first foldable hardware and its software.

On AppStories+, Federico shares his experience using Samsung DeX.

NPC: Next Portable Console

This week, Nintendo dropped a big Switch 2 software surprise, Anbernic got back to being weird, Federico went large with his PC streaming setup, and more.

Comfort Zone

Matt poisons the show with Android, Niléane brings us back with Forkflift, and everyone finds a really great Mac app they’ve never used before.

On Cozy Zone, we discover who has a good backup system, who has a robust backup system, and who basically doesn’t care about their data.

MacStories Unwind

This week, Federico and John share the highlights of their recent MacStories Setups update. Plus, John has an offbeat movie pick, and Federico is revisiting a game that’s an old favorite.

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Apple Discontinues the Mac Pro→

In a move that should suprise no one, Apple discontinued the Mac Pro today.

From Chance Miller at 9to5 Mac:

It’s the end of an era: Apple has confirmed to 9to5Mac that the Mac Pro is being discontinued. It has been removed from Apple’s website as of Thursday afternoon. The “buy” page on Apple’s website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac’s homepage, where all references have been removed.

Apple has also confirmed to 9to5Mac that it has no plans to offer future Mac Pro hardware.

This change has felt inevitable ever since the introduction of the Mac Studio. Although the Mac Studio lacks the Mac Pro’s expansion slots, it packs a lot of performance into a much smaller package, meeting a wide variety of professional needs, which undoubtedly cut into the Mac Pro’s sales.

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ETA Prime Answers the Question: What if the MacBook Neo Had Thermo-Electric Cooling?→

By all accounts, the MacBook Neo is a great budget laptop. However, because it has no active cooling system, the A18 Pro thermally throttles pretty quickly, degrading performance of games and other applications.

Thanks to how easy it is to take the Neo apart, you’ve probably already seen videos of users adding a thermal pad to transfer some of the heat from the Neo’s chip to its aluminum chassis. The result is a meaningful boost in performance.

ETA Prime decided to take things further with an external liquid-cooled solution that attaches magnetically to the Neo to see if even more performance could be squeezed out of the computer. The first step was to add a custom copper plate and thermal pad layer that transfers heat from the A18 Pro to the Neo’s case, which like other thermal pad solutions made a meaningful difference in game performance. Next, ETA Prime attached a thermal-electric cooling device typically used for gaming on mobile phones to the bottom of the Neo to push the A18 Pro’s operating temperature consistently below the throttling temperature.

The results were substantial. It’s worth watching the full video, but a game like No Man’s Sky, which throttled quickly and ran at around 30fps on the Neo, ran at around 60fps with ETA Prime’s mod. While a thermal-electric cooling device goes beyond what a typical user would be willing to do, it does make you wonder what the Neo would be capable of with a more robust built-in cooling system.

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MacStories Setups: Refining and Simplifying

Federico's setup (left) is as sleek as mine is chaotic (right).

Federico’s setup (left) is as sleek as mine is chaotic (right).

I always enjoy these MacStories Setup updates because everyone is different, with its own unique themes and trends. Last year, Federico spent a lot of time paring back his gadgets, while I was busy expanding my office setup, driven largely by moving away from a Studio Display. For this setup update, I’d say we’re a little more in sync. Federico was a busier shopper than I was over the past few months, but we both spent time refining and simplifying our setups. Let’s look at where we landed.

At the end of 2025, I treated myself to a new 4K 32” OLED display and mini PC for gaming. The combo is great, and I don’t regret not waiting for the new Studio Display, but it did require a few adjustments.

Here's a glamor shot of the Elements E5 Hub from CalDigit because in reality, hubs with cables coming out of every side look messy.

Here’s a glamor shot of the Elements E5 Hub from CalDigit because in reality, hubs with cables coming out of every side look messy.

The biggest change has been the addition of a CalDigit Elements E5 Hub. My ASUS display has fewer ports than my old Studio Display, so it was time to expand. What I love about the Elements hub is that it’s tiny compared to CalDigit’s docks. That’s because all it has is Thunderbolt 5 and USB-A ports. I didn’t need HDMI, Ethernet, and the rest of what the CalDigit docks offered, so I saved some space and money and filled every port available.

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Apple Overhauls App Store Connect

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Overnight, Apple rolled out a big update to App Store Connect with new sales and analytics tools for developers. App Store Connect is the online portal that developers use to manage everything related to selling apps from TestFlight betas, to managing their App Store listings and tracking sales data and analytics.

It’s that last piece that was overhauled with this release. In fact, Apple’s post on its developer site says there are over 100 new metrics developers can use to measure the performance of their apps, all of which have been designed in a privacy-first way to protect users.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The granularity is impressive. For example, developers can track where their sales are coming from, including search, App Store browsing, web sources, and more. Conversion rates are a big part of the analytics, allowing developers to see how many people have seen their apps on the Store and downloaded them, breaking down first-time downloads and re-downloads. Analytics also tie into App Store features like In-App Events, custom product pages, and developer marketing efforts across a multitude of channels using campaign links. There’s a lot more, including metrics that track app pre-orders, user engagement and retention, and good old-fashioned sales data sliced and diced to allow developers to better understand the sources of their income.

And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg of what has changed in App Store Connect. So if you’re a developer, it’s worth spending some time with your app data and reading the new guide Apple published that covers it all.

Some data reported in App Store Connect is being deprecated later this year and next.

Some data reported in App Store Connect is being deprecated later this year and next.

Since the changes rolled out, a couple of concerns I’ve seen expressed online are that there will no longer be a single place to view the aggregate performance of multiple apps and that the new default reporting period is three months. Those concerns are well founded. The changes are organized on an app-by-app basis, and as Apple says in a banner on App Store Connect, the Dashboards in the Trends section of Connect and related reports where that data was available are being deprecated later this year and next. So, while the data Apple offers is deep for each app, the aggregate data falls short by not providing a birds-eye view of a developer’s entire app catalog.

For what it’s worth, Apple is aware of the feedback regarding cross-app reporting. Also, the shorter sales reporting periods, such as the past 24 hours and seven days, are still available, but they’re less visible because three months is the new default.

This is a big update to App Store Connect that will take developers time to get used to, but it’s also a welcome change that provides meaningful new insights into App Store performance. I expect that there will be more areas where the changes fall short of developers’ expectations. However, it’s also clear to me that Apple has heard the early feedback, so I wouldn’t be surprised if adjustments are made in the future. On balance, though, I think the changes give developers valuable new ways to think about and manage their businesses across the increasingly competitive app landscape, which is welcome.