Apple Safari Now Tracks Key Web Vitals for Performance
▼ Summary
– Safari 26.2 adds native browser support for measuring the Core Web Vitals metrics Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Interaction to Next Paint (INP).
– This support allows site owners to collect LCP and INP performance data from Safari users through their own analytics and Real User Monitoring (RUM) tools.
– INP is a critical metric that measures total response time to user interactions, helping identify if a page feels laggy or frozen.
– The update enables many major analytics and RUM platforms, like Google Analytics and Datadog, to now include Safari visitor data in their reports.
– This provides a more complete view of real-user performance, closing a long-standing data blind spot for the significant share of web traffic using Safari.
The latest update to Apple Safari, version 26.2, introduces crucial support for measuring Core Web Vitals, specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric. This development allows website owners to finally gather accurate performance data from Safari users through their own analytics and real user monitoring tools, closing a significant gap in understanding the experience of visitors on Apple devices.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a key ranking signal that measures how long it takes for the main content of a webpage to load. Interaction to Next Paint (INP), another vital metric, assesses a site’s responsiveness by tracking the total time between a user’s click, tap, or key press and the subsequent visual update on the screen. It reports the slowest interaction during a visit, helping identify if a page feels laggy or unresponsive. Fast INP scores are directly linked to a positive, engaging user experience.
For a long time, performance diagnostics had a blind spot for traffic coming from Safari. Native browser support for these APIs now enables precise measurement. This means site owners can include Safari visitor data in their field performance analytics where they have configured monitoring, such as in Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or other platforms. It is important to note that this change does not affect public, Chrome-based tools like PageSpeed Insights or CrUX data.
A wide range of analytics packages and Real User Monitoring (RUM) platforms can now be configured to surface these metrics from Safari. This includes popular solutions like Google Analytics (GA4), Matomo, Amplitude, and Mixpanel, as well as enterprise RUM tools from Akamai mPulse, Cloudflare, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Sentry, and Splunk.
According to Apple’s documentation, the update adds support for the Event Timing API and LCP. The Event Timing API measures a site’s response to user interactions, tracking the complete timeline from initial input through event handlers and DOM updates until the browser paints the result. It reports on interactions that exceed a performance threshold, making the calculation of INP possible. LCP measures the render time of the largest visible element in the viewport, such as a hero image or major text block, providing a clear signal for when the page feels essentially loaded to the user.
With Safari representing a substantial portion of web traffic, these improvements are critical for SEO and user experience monitoring. They empower site owners with a more complete and accurate view of real-world performance across a broader spectrum of devices and browsers, enabling better optimization decisions.
(Source: Search Engine Journal)
