Testing web application on Mac/Safari when I don't own a Mac

Having been caught out recently when a web site I launched displayed perfectly on IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari on Windows but was corrupted when viewed using Safari on the Mac (by a potential customer), I need to start testing how my sites look when viewed on a Mac.

Problem is, I don't own a Mac.

I've tried BrowsrCamp, which claims to provide VNC access to a Mac with lots of browsers installed, but after finding it unreliable (so far, it's worked 1 day in the last 5) I need another solution.

Any suggestions?

The best site to test website and see them realtime on MAC Safari is by using

Browserstack

They have like 25 free minutes of first time testing and then 10 free mins each day..You can even test your pages from your local PC by using their WEB TUNNEL Feature

I tested 7 to 8 pages in browserstack...And I think they have some java debugging tool in the upper right corner that is great help

For my case (a small, personal project) https://www.lambdatest.com/ was very helpful. Free tier allows for 6 sessions per month.

Meanwhile, MacOS High Sierra can be run in VirtualBox (on a PC) for Free. It's not really fast but it works for general browser testing.

How to setup see here: https://www.howtogeek.com/289594/how-to-install-macos-sierra-in-virtualbox-on-windows-10/

I'm using this for a while now and it works quite well

A) Install VirtualBox and download free MacOS High Sierra image

See tutorial here: https://www.wikigain.com/install-macos-high-sierra-virtualbox-windows/

You will get the latest Safari.

You don't need to pay for those online services!!!

Use these vbox settings to increase resolution and memory, but it is still very laggy and slow:

cd "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\"
VBoxManage setextradata "macOS" VBoxInternal2/EfiGraphicsResolution 1920x1080
VBoxManage modifyvm "macOS" --vram 256

B) Alternatively try VMware 李

which seems to be much faster: youtube.com/watch?v=K7E_UqgCFbQ (video taken down) - use google ( you need VMware + MacOs ISO image)

@edit: It is significantly faster!!!

These sites may help:

[Browsera][1]
[Browsershots][2]

[1]: http://www.browsera.com/ "Browsera" [2]: http://browsershots.org/ "Browser Shots"

If it's a major concern to start doing a lot of testing on a Mac, then I would definitely suggest buying a second hand Mac, or perhaps building a Hackintosh. The former gets you up and running quickly, the latter gives you a lot of power for the same price.

For just the odd piece of testing, running OS X in VMWare on your current PC is a cheaper option.

https://appetize.io/demo?device=iphone8&scale=75&orientation=portrait&osVersion=13.3 60 seconds is enought for test. Isn't need to register account to.

Unfortunately you cannot run MacOS X on anything but a genuine Mac.

MacOS X Server however can be run in VMWare. A stopgap solution would be to install it inside a VM. But you should be aware that MacOS X Server and MacOS X are not exactly the same, and your testing is not going to be exactly what the user has. Not to mention the $499 price tag.

Simplest way is to buy yourself a cheap mac mini or a laptop with a broken screen used on ebay, plug it onto your network and access it via VNC to do your testing.

Amazon AWS recently launched macOS EC2 instances.

As of now (Dec 2020) they are pretty pricey, you have to reserve them minimum for 24h.

You can connect to the instance via VNC (sample guide for connecting from Windows) and test your browser.

https://turbo.net/ offers a browser sandbox in which containerised virtual machines run browser sessions for you. I tried it with Safari on my Windows development machine and it seems to work very well.

There's a free trial for 100 minutes on https://browserling.com and you can test on Safari v7.0 during the trial period.

Litmus may help you. It will take screenshots of your webpage(s) in a wide variety of browsers so you can make sure that your site works in all of them. A free alternative (Litmus is a paid service) is Browsershots, but you do get what you pay for. (In some screenshots that Browershots returns, the browser hasn't yet finished loading the webpage...)

Of course, as other people have suggested, buying a Mac is also a good solution (and may be better, depending on the kind of testing you need to do), because then you can test your website yourself in any of the browsers that run under Mac OS X or Windows.