This project is developed with the assistance of an LLM

The modern web, on a 25-year-old Mac.

A native browser for the Carbon era, Mac OS 8.6 through Mac OS X 10.6: real CSS, modern JavaScript, and HTTPS on the Mac itself. No proxy, no second machine.

MacSurf 2.0.5 on a Power Mac G3 iMac, rendering hackaday.com at full desktop width over native HTTPS.

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🆓 Free monthly stable A tested build on macsurf.org, free for everyone, with real hardware testing behind it. Latest stable: MacSurf 2.3 "OPEN TABS"

⭐ Weekly, for supporters In-progress builds land in Beta-Box every week, ahead of every stable release, with dev notes along the way. Become a supporter →

_{Every project stays free as source. Build it yourself and you never need Beta-Box. You are paying for the build and the cadence, not for access.}

Support development

   

Follow along

 

Thanks to our supporters:
Ko-Fi: Chris Marks, Rogue, Turuun, kilgeist
Patreon: Mack Chamberlain, Lucas, Joseph Mulvaney, Shlooom

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Note

2.3 "OPEN TABS" is the largest MacSurf release since 2.0. Tabs are finally enabled, with independent page, scroll, history, rendering and JavaScript state inside one native Mac window. Underneath that is a major dynamic-page/lifecycle rewrite, a much larger browser API surface, more CSS and image/SVG support, rebuilt native managers, stronger networking and security, and a long hardware-driven stability campaign. MacSurf remains honest, in-progress software; some very heavy modern applications still expose layout and API gaps. See the 2.3 release notes and docs/status.md for details.

Why this exists

The web outgrew Classic Mac OS twenty years ago, and modern HTTPS finished the job around 2016. Pull a G3 or G4 out of the closet today and it can barely reach a single live site.

MacSurf fixes that on the machine itself, with no screenshot proxy and no remote-terminal trick. It is a native browser built with the tools that shipped on the platform: CodeWarrior, Carbon, QuickDraw, Open Transport. It speaks TLS 1.3 straight to the modern web through macTLS, a BearSSL-based stack baked into the binary with the full Mozilla CA bundle, and runs modern JavaScript through macQJS, a QuickJS port for Mac OS 9.

As far as we can tell, it is the first serious NetSurf port to Classic Mac OS, and the first Mac OS 9 browser with native CSS Grid, CSS custom properties, and an on-device modern JavaScript engine.

Real sites, on real hardware

Every shot below is a live site, captured on a Power Mac G3 running Mac OS 9.2.2 with MacSurf 2.0.5. They are kept here as a hardware baseline; MacSurf 2.3 has moved substantially beyond the browser shown in these images.

hackaday.com A modern, JavaScript-heavy news site at full desktop width.	68kmla.org A full XenForo forum: logged in, full-width, correct text size.
macintoshgarden.org Image-heavy and fully styled, over native HTTPS.	news.ycombinator.com Hacker News: login and front page, no phantom boxes.

New in 2.3

Tabs. One native Mac window can now host multiple independent browser pages. Command-T opens a tab; Command-W closes the current tab. Background tabs retain their own JavaScript realm, title, URL, content and scroll state without taking over the foreground chrome.

The release also brings a major dynamic-page and JavaScript compatibility pass; deeper DOM reconstruction safety; CSS math, sizing, Grid, variables and paint improvements; native WebP and stronger SVG; a rebuilt Downloads window; improved Preferences, Bookmarks and History; tighter HTTPS/security behavior; and a large body of crash- and lifetime fixes.

MacSurf 2.3 supports Mac OS 8.6 through Mac OS X 10.6. On Intel Macs, the PowerPC build runs under Rosetta where available.

Full 2.3 notes →

New in 2.0.5

The headline is hackaday.com rendering at full desktop width (shown above): correct type, article cards, and images in place.

Under it: text is measured in real device pixels (author font-size no longer draws 25% too small), a large modern-CSS pass (justified text, soft hyphens, logical properties, box-alignment shorthands, grid auto-sizing), a more capable JavaScript engine (real fetch/XHR, resolving Promise chains, DOM traversal, document.cookie), and tracker/ad-network blocking. Full 2.0.5 notes →

New in 2.0

Type-ahead address bar History- and bookmark-backed suggestions as you type.
History manager Day-grouped, searchable, clearable. A real window.	Bookmark manager Save, organize, and jump straight from the menu.

Earlier shots: the same sites on previous builds

68kmla.org	macintoshgarden.org
macintoshrepository.org	machut.net
lobste.rs	DuckDuckGo

How it got here: a couple of early milestones

v0.2: JavaScript on Mac OS 9 The first JS-bearing page evaluating live, on-device.

CSS Grid Real Grid layout: spans, full-row heroes, auto-wrap.

The pieces

Component	Language	Purpose
browser/	C (C89, CW8)	NetSurf fork with a macos9 frontend. Carbon for the UI, QuickDraw for drawing, Open Transport for networking, macQJS for JavaScript.
macTLS sibling repo	C (CW8)	Native TLS 1.3 (1.2 fallback) for OS 9: HTTPS straight from the Mac. BearSSL underneath, full Mozilla CA bundle baked in.
macQJS sibling repo	C (CW8)	A QuickJS port for Classic Mac OS: modern ES2023 JavaScript on PowerPC.

What works today

Rendering & CSS Full NetSurf fetch, parse, cascade, layout and QuickDraw paint pipeline CSS custom properties with selector/media scope, specificity, inheritance and deferred var() resolution Flexbox and CSS Grid, including stronger auto-track sizing, minmax(), justify-self, row/column gaps and stretch behavior CSS math and sizing: calc(), min(), max(), clamp(), min/max/fit-content and viewport-relative sizing Gradients, border-radius, box-shadow, opacity, transforms, z-index stacking and improved background clipping/origin PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP, TIFF and native WebP, including animated WebP machinery Much stronger inline/external SVG: sizing, viewBox, aspect-ratio modes, shapes, transforms, fill/stroke and embedded raster images Downloadable web fonts, including WOFF2/Brotli fixes Full 2.3 release notes →

JavaScript, macQJS (QuickJS / ES2023) Modern language features plus ES modules fetch / XHR, Headers, Request, Response, AbortController / AbortSignal and native cancellation Promises, microtasks, timers, requestAnimationFrame, persistent localStorage and sendBeacon MutationObserver, ResizeObserver and IntersectionObserver Stronger DOM traversal/selectors, cloning/replacement, reflected properties, events and prototype relationships Canvas 2D compatibility surface with native-font measureText() crypto.getRandomValues() and randomUUID() Networking & security HTTP/1.1: chunked transfer, keep-alive, redirects, pooling, cache revalidation and gzip responses HTTPS via macTLS: TLS 1.3 with TLS 1.2 fallback and Mozilla CA bundle Certificate rejection fails closed; scripted HTTPS requests cannot silently downgrade to HTTP Persistent cookies/logins, tighter referrer handling and tracker blocking Browser chrome Tabbed browsing with independent page, history, scroll, rendering and JavaScript state Address bar, back / forward / reload / home and type-ahead suggestions Rebuilt Downloads window with progress, speed, ETA, cancel, open and Reveal in Finder Native Preferences, Bookmarks and History managers Text input, selection, clipboard commands, keyboard navigation and native form controls

Supported systems

MacSurf 2.3 supports Mac OS 8.6 through Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

• PowerPC Macs run MacSurf directly.
• Intel Macs can run the PowerPC build through Rosetta where available.
• Mac OS 9 remains the primary target and the environment most heavily tested on original hardware.
• Recommended memory: 128 MB minimum, 256 MB recommended, 384 MB for the heaviest JavaScript sites.

Stability and diagnostics

A large part of 2.3 is work you should not have to notice: stronger page/runtime ownership, safer DOM reconstruction, guarded late callbacks, cache/content lifetime fixes, image reuse across reconvert, TLS bounds checks, and tab isolation.

MacSurf also now has a much deeper built-in diagnostic system for correlating navigation, documents, frames, network requests, JavaScript tasks, timers, mutations, XHR/fetch, Promise rejections, layout, paint and compatibility gaps. The final Tiger multi-tab stress campaign completed 20/20 cycles with zero crashes and zero hangs, followed by testing on Mac OS 9.2.2 hardware.

Download

MacSurf 2.3 "OPEN TABS" (2026-09-19). See what changed in the full 2.3 release notes →.

• Download MacSurf →: expand with StuffIt Expander and double-click. MacSurf supports Mac OS 8.6 through Mac OS X 10.6; on Intel Macs the PowerPC build runs under Rosetta where available. No installer.
• Already on a Mac OS 9 machine? Grab it from the plain-HTTP macsurf.org, since GitHub does not render on-device yet.
• All releases →

Want the builds between releases? Weekly in-progress builds land in Beta-Box for supporters, ahead of every stable release.

Building

MacSurf builds on Mac OS 9 with CodeWarrior 8 Pro (8.3 update). The source is cross-compile-clean against Retro68 PowerPC GCC, which we use for fast Linux-side syntax checks.

• Mac-side build guide
• Linux cross-dev workflow

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_{Native HTTPS via macTLS · JavaScript via macQJS · built on NetSurf · intro video}

For Gary & Kaija