I found an iPad browser that finally puts a desktop-like experience on Apple’s tablet

The situation with mobile browsers on Apple’s platforms is not exactly rewarding for users. Safari gets the job done, but for every other browser landing on the iPhone or iPad, they are forced to use Apple’s WebKit engine. Simply put, most browsers are simply wrappers built atop the same foundation on iOS and iPadOS

As a result, you won’t find Safari alternatives that can really stand out. On the desktop side for Mac, there’s no such rule. As a result, you can find terrific options such as Perplexity Comet, Dia, and ChatGPT Atlas, aside from the big names such as Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. 

It’s a pretty limiting situation, especially if you have the more powerful Pro or Air series tablets, which feature a desktop-class chip, but don’t have a browser option that can exploit all that firepower. My long search for a functionally fulfilling iPad browser finally led me to Beam, and it’s the closest I have ever gone to experiencing a desktop-like browsing experience on my tablet. 

What is Beam? 

Beam is special for a couple of reasons. It takes inspiration from a popular desktop browser and executes the core principles on the iPad’s screen. Second, it taps into the untapped potential of on-device AI processing and integrates useful AI-driven features that are mostly available on desktop browsers. It’s not mindless cramming, but subtle and convenient. 

Here’s the cool part. The browser was created by a 16-year-old who was frustrated by the browser limitations on iPads, and wanted something with a deeper set of features. Henrik Singh, a UK-based teenager, told me that they were inspired by Arc, one of the most popular Mac browsers out there, and which has now transitioned into a spiritual successor named Dia. 

“I use a 12.9-inch iPad with a Magic Keyboard. Because I’m at school, I use my laptop for most work, and my iPad for written work (mostly maths). I kept trying to bring just my iPad and leave the laptop at home, but I couldn’t make it work. The blocker wasn’t the hardware at all – it was the browser,” Singh told me. “No proper sidebar, no spaces, no command bar, nothing like the real Arc experience.”

Beam does a pretty neat job at offering some of the best Arc features. You get a beautiful UI and a sidebar, where you can create tabs and spaces (think of them as browser profiles), each with its own color code. You can even choose to keep and open tabs in their own folder, within each space. 

It’s extremely snappy. The responsive windows and animations make every interaction feel more refined than Safari. Even with six active spaces, each with nearly half a dozen (or more) active tabs, Beam never stuttered or crashed on my M4 iPad Pro. This browser, as its creator told me, is made for using with a keyboard attached so that you can cycle through tabs and take action with shortcuts. 

What sets it apart? 

Beam makes no secret of its inspiration from Arc. You get a familiar collapsible side panel where all your tabs live. And this is where it takes a functional lead over Safari. You see, each color-coded sidebar is actually a dedicated space for a specific kind of work.

You can create multiple spaces, and toggle between them with a swipe gesture. Each space can be customized with its own unique icon and themed color. Additionally, you can create custom folders within each space to manage the clutter of tabs. I love this approach a lot more than tab groups.

There are a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts to handle your tab duties, and you can customize them all. In addition to the basic navigation chores, you can also customize shortcuts for search and page-related tasks. I also love the built-in ad blocker, which you can customize across three levels, as well. 

You can choose to auto-wipe tabs on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence. And if you are someone who needs their tabs active once you return back to work, you can also decide how much memory you can allocate for tab caching. In my case, 2GB was enough to get day-to-day work done without any hiccups. 

You get the usual universal search, but in Beam, there’s a command bar that serves as a unified hub for active tabs and history. If you’re working on a tab, you just have to type any identifying content (such as website name, keyword, or headline) and tap on the action button to instantly switch to the target tab. 

There are plenty of other tiny customization options that make it stand out from the heavy-hitters. Overall, Beam offers just the right mix of extra flexibility that lifts the iPad browsing experience to a desktop-tier experience, while simultaneously reducing the design clutter. 

Putting AI to good use

If you’ve been following the latest developments in the world of browsers, every player seems to have a singular focus right now — AI integration. It has given birth to a whole new breed of “AI browsers,” such as Dia, ChatGPT Atlas, and Comet. Moreover, Google is busy cramming Gemini within Chrome, while Microsoft has already built a sidebar in Edge, even on the iPad version. 

Beam doesn’t go overboard with it. In fact, it doesn’t even tap into the popular options such as ChatGPT or Gemini. On the contrary, it relies on the Foundation Model framework and deploys Apple’s own AI models for basic tasks. To what end? Well, for starters, the AI tools are bundled within their own toolkit called Beam Intelligence. 

Not everyone is a fan of AI in web browsers. 

Apple Intelligence. Personal Intelligence. Beam Intelligence. See the pattern? 

“I know AI features in browsers aren’t for everyone, which is why everything is optional, toggleable, and runs fully on-device with no extra cost,” Singh told me. This is a pretty neat approach, not just from a cost perspective, but also because the AI features can work even without an internet connection. You can choose to disable it entirely, as well, if you’re not a fan of AI in the browser experience. 

So, what can it do? Think of it as Apple Intelligence on steroids. In addition to the usual summarization of a page, it has quick actions for creating a TLDR version, Key Points, Structured Overview, Outline for Notes, and Explain Simply. There’s also a dedicated Pros & Cons action available, alongside Action Items, which essentially reads a web page and extracts tasks, recommendations, and steps from it. 

The most promising of them all is the Chat With Page function. Simply put, it’s like pulling an AI and asking questions about the active tabs, instead of relying on the built-in action presets. Beam Intelligence opens in its own window alongside the lower right corner of the screen, and goes away when the task at hand is done. It doesn’t persist as a sidebar, unlike Gemini, ChatGPT, or Copilot in the so-called AI browsers. 

I love this approach. It deploys AI without shoving a persistent presence. Singh tells me that Apple’s AI models are still pretty limited, but I am hoping that with the upcoming Gemini overhaul for Apple’s Foundation Models, the situation will change. Singh has a few AI-driven ambitious ideas of his own. 

“I plan on potentially supporting other on-device models (like Meta’s Llama models), bring-your-own-key cloud models, and deeper features like AI-powered tab grouping,” he tells me. The ability to utilize AI for tab actions sounds convenient and familiar. The idea has already been implemented across desktop “AI browsers” and I extensively use them. 

Overall, the AI integration within Beam is pretty useful without going over the top. I just wish there were an option to create a customizable keyboard shortcut to bring it up and make the AI chat window go away. Another limitation of using an on-device AI model is that its intelligence is limited to the given context (read: the active tab content), but it can’t pull fresh information from the internet, unlike Gemini. 

Overall, if you intend to push the iPad for serious web-based work, especially with a keyboard, Beam offers the most rewarding experience, by far. It’s the closest you can get to a desktop-style browser on Apple’s tablet in terms of aesthetics as well as functional depth. For heavy iPad users, the $5 one-time purchase is totally worth it. 

Download Beam Browser from the App Store.