# MacSurf

12 Hacker News commenters recommended MacSurf and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A free web browser for classic Mac OS 9 that people find impressive for its engineering. Some commenters note it lacks TLS 1.2 support, though it has TLS 1.3.

## Why people recommend it

- Impressive engineering for an old system (4 comments): "That's impressive, too bad modern web requires more than 2000x the transistor density to run JS at decent speed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48337593)) "To me it proves that a technology can be understood and implemented by one person." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48337567)) "bringing an entire browser to a system this old is a serious achievement" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48340501))
- Praised as a cool project (3 comments): "What a cool project! The homepage for this is really quite slick" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306670)) "Looks fantastic, wish I had a G4 to test it on!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48344706)) "This is awesome and greatly appreciated" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822052))

## What people warn about

- Lacks TLS 1.2 support (1 comments): "Too bad it’s not both TLS 1.2 and 1.3" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48288831))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Arc browser](https://hackerapproved.com/p/arc-browser.md): 78 recommend
- [Helium browser](https://hackerapproved.com/p/helium-browser.md): 51 recommend
- [Dillo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dillo.md): 49 recommend
- [Pale Moon](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pale-moon.md): 18 recommend
- [Glide Browser](https://hackerapproved.com/p/glide-browser.md): 11 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "MacSurf", https://hackerapproved.com/p/macsurf/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).