How To Use Safari On Mac

Safari is the web browser app bundled with all Macs every bit part of macOS. You don't have to use it – if you prefer to use Chrome or Firefox, for example, you can install those apps for your web surfing needs. Simply in our experience, Safari is a good option – and as you can run across from our round-up of best web browser apps for the Mac, it's pretty much the best you tin can get.

If you are new to Safari this article will help you find your style around the app. And if you are a seasoned Safari user we will reveal a few Safari tips and tricks that you might non know, including some of the fab new features in Safari 11, the latest version of Safari for Mac.

If y'all'd like to read about using Safari on the iPad or iPhone, read this.

How to get the latest version of Safari for Mac

First things showtime. You volition want to make certain y'all have the latest version of Safari. At the time of writing the nigh up-to-appointment version is Safari 11.1.

Hither's how to find out which version of Safari you lot are running:

Open Safari.
Click on Safari > About Safari in the carte du jour.
The resulting window will reveal the version number.

Every bit long as your copy of MacOS – the Mac operating organisation – is upward to engagement your re-create of Safari should be because Safari is arranged equally part of an operating system update.

However, you don't have to exist using the latest version of macOS to have the latest version of Safari. Apple is bundling Safari 11 with High Sierra, Sierra and El Capitan versions of the Mac Os. If yous need to update your version of MacOS read this: how to update your Mac operating system software.

Now that you have the latest version of Safari you can start enjoying some of the new features that we volition hash out below.

Safari nuts

If y'all are a surfing novice you lot might want to familiarise yourself with these tips.

Nosotros'll start off with the basics, such as how to go into Safari, how to search, and other useful pointers. You can skip this bit if you lot aren't a Safari beginner, there are plenty of tips below that yous might notice useful.

You tin find Safari in the Dock at the bottom of your Mac's screen. Its icon looks like a compass.

How to use Safari

The big bar at the summit of the Safari window is where you tin can enter a website URL or a search term to either take you directly to a website, or to a list of pages that match your query.

It will automatically search in Google (but y'all can change it and so information technology defaults to another search engine).

You rarely have to enter a consummate URL for a website. Once you have visited a site once you simply need to type a few letters of its proper noun and it will autofill the rest of the URL.

For example, blazon: 'Face' and it will autofill the residue of the URL and when y'all press enter it will take you direct to Facebook.

How to make it easy to discover your favourite sites in Safari

There are lots of ways of making it easy to become to websites y'all frequently visit.

When you open up a new tab (encounter below for details of how to practise that) you will see your Favourites view including Frequently Visited Sites. You could also choose to see a Acme Sites view, set up a Homepage, only see an empty page, or accept the Aforementioned Page show up. These are all options you lot can access in Safari > Preferences > General. Simply click on the carte beside New tabs open with.

If yous cull the Top Sites view you lot can adjust it to show 6, 12 or 24 sites. To add and remove Top Sites hover over the preview until you run across an x and a pivot icon. Pin those sites you wish to keep and click x on those you don't epitome you will want to find again. The sites that appear in Top Sites tend to be those you visit nigh frequently.

You can choose ane of these views for every fourth dimension you open up a new Safari window.

How to Pin a site in Safari

In Safari you tin can as well 'Pivot' favourite sites to the carte du jour bar – a simple way of calculation a shortcut to Facebook, YouTube or whatsoever site you visit frequently.

When you lot Pin a site you will meet a small icon representing that site on the left of your tabs.

To Pin a particular spider web page correct- or control-click on the tab and choose Pivot Tab. Then it'due south very easy to go directly to that site.

Using tabs in Safari

Back to tabs. Y'all can open multiple tabs in a Safari window, this ways that rather than having a different Safari window open for every website yous are on, you tin merely take one Safari window open and multiple pages attainable through that.

To open a new tab press Command + T.

In that location are two ways that you can see a preview of the unlike tabs you have open:

You tin can see a short summary of the proper name of the spider web page on the tabs themselves. This might be sufficient if y'all simply have i or two tabs open, but once you have more than viii you'll probably notice the summary is also short to be useful.
Or, you tin click on the icon that looks like two boxes on the right of the search/URL box. This will show a thumbnail view of all the web pages you have open.

While nosotros're on the subject of Tabs, you can shut a single tab just past hovering over the tab and clicking on the 10 that shows up in the corner of that tab.

It's also possible to close all just one tab. But hold down the Option/Alt fundamental when y'all click on the ten to get rid of all the other tabs that are open, except for the folio on that tab.

How to tell which Safari tabs are playing audio

Not everyone wants to surf the web in silence though. In that location is lots of very worthy audio and video content available on the web and no doubt many surfers wouldn't want to miss out on that.

The problem is when you have multiple spider web pages open and more than ane of them is blaring out audio.

Luckily there is another Safari tip to gear up that.

You tin identify which of your open up tabs is playing audio by the speaker symbol that appears in the far right of the Safari tab associated with that spider web page.

It's possible to mute the audio with a single click on the speaker symbol without fifty-fifty opening the tab.

And if more than one Safari webpage is playing audio yous tin cull to mute them all at in one case. Only click on the speaker symbol in the URL bar and cull Mute all Tabs.

Alternatively, you can Option/Alt-click on the speaker icon of the tab yous do wish to mind to and mute the audio on all the other tabs.

How to reopen all windows from the final session

Here's another useful tip. You can easily reopen all the tabs you lot had open last time you were using Safari.

Click History > Reopen All Windows from Last Session to rapidly recover all the windows y'all were recently looking at. You might also find this helpful: How to consign bookmarks from Chrome to Safari

How to show the total URL in Safari

Another handy Safari tip. In Yosemite Safari stopped showing the whole URL – a feature designed to assist avoid users existence taken in by phishing scams, wherein the URL is obfuscated. In other words, if you lot're visiting https://macworld.co.uk/this/page/that/page and so all you'll see in the address bar is macworld.co.uk.

If this isn't what you desire, perhaps you want to see the full URL of the commodity you are reading, y'all can alter things so that the whole URL is shown.

Open Safari'due south preferences dialog box (Cmd+,) then click the Avant-garde icon and put a check aslope Prove Full Website Address.

How to change how y'all view websites in Safari

One of our favourite features in Safari xi is the actress control we accept over the web. You can tweak the settings of specific websites and so that they suit you for example.

How to modify the font size on a website

You can tweak your settings so that when y'all visit a specific site the images and text are bigger – perfect if you are frustrated to discover that the text on a favourite website is a bit too small for your eyes.

Here'southward how to overstate (or reduce) the font size on a particular website then that it stays that size whether you visit:

Go to Safari > Preferences.
Click on the Websites tab.
Click on Page Zoom.
Find the site you lot want to customise (whatever site you have open or have recently visited volition be listed here).
Choose a number bigger or smaller than 100% depending on how large you want the text and images to be.

You can do this on a per website basis, or if you frequently find that the text on websites is as well small for you lot, you can cull to default to the percent that suits you wherever y'all go on the spider web. Annotation that non all websites are created the same so some volition naturally take larger blazon than others.

To choose the zoom per centum for all websites, click in the drop down box beside "When visiting other websites".

Another do good of having access to these controls that allow you to change the way you view the spider web is that information technology enables you to end seeing ads and auto-playing videos. Nosotros'll look at that below.

How to stop ads and auto-playing videos in Safari

Another enticing feature of Safari is the style you can choose to adjust the settings and so that yous never see another ad or machine-playing video again. Nosotros'll look at how to practice that side by side.

How to stop autoplay audio and video in Safari

Perhaps you are frustrated by automobile-playing video blaring out every time you visit a website.

With Safari 11 you tin can disable autoplay video, so you will never again accept to hear voices while you are browsing the web. Hither'southward what to do:

Open the offending website.
Click on Safari > Settings for This Website (or right-click the URL box and select Settings for This Website).
You volition see a pop-up window with the option Car-Play, click on the words besides that to see three choices:
- Allow All Motorcar-Play
- Stop Media with Sound
- Never Auto-Play

Stop Media with Sounds is the default option, and it will essentially stop any video from starting if the sound is set to be on. If the video is set up to play silently it volition however run but you won't hear information technology, unless you choose to.

If you would rather not let auto-playing video play, you tin can choose Never Motorcar-Play.

Remember that if you conform the settings this fashion it will only apply to autoplay videos on that website. If yous'd like to never see an autoplaying video again follow these steps:

Become to Safari > Preferences and click on Websites.
Click Auto-Play and in the section on the right you volition see any currently open up websites. As before, y'all can cull to:
- Allow All Automobile-Play
- End Media with Sound
- Never Machine-Play

And there is an option below to choose the same settings "When visiting other websites".

Nosotros accept a complete tutorial that explains how to use this characteristic hither: How to stop autoplay video in Safari & Chrome on Mac.

We besides encompass how to finish Safari asking to use your location data here.

How to finish seeing ads on websites in Safari

While ads pay a part of our wage, nosotros realise that some ads can really reduce the enjoyment of spider web browsing. Usually these are ads that have something incorrect with the style they have been coded and aren't behaving as intended, or even worse they are spam ads that accept crept onto the ad networks. We are honestly as frustrated as you are!

One of the large changes Apple bought to Safari 11 was the ability to actually manage the ads that y'all come across – this was part of Apple'due south try to make the web work better. Effectively, if Apple tree can remove ads that aren't behaving equally intended and are jamming up page loading times and the like, then Safari will perform quicker, which means that the surfer has a ameliorate time surfing.

At that place are a few ways yous can take advantage of these anti-advert related features in Safari 11.

One manner is to choose to surf the web – or certain pages – in Reader mode.

Reader mode is a fashion of viewing webpages that Apple introduced back in 2010 in Safari 5. Reader displays simply the text and images from a webpage, without whatsoever of the other page article of furniture. We recall it is a bit like reading a Word document or a PDF. The feature hasn't changed much over the years, simply in Safari 11 it's became possible to choose for a site to always be viewed in Reader Style.

First, hither'due south how to view a site in Reader mode:

Click on the stack of lines to the left of the URL bar.
This will automatically change the webpage to Reader view.
Click on the stack of lines to plough Reader view off.

It's worth checking how a site appears in this mode before switching over to it because not all sites implement information technology peculiarly well (sometimes you volition find that an article stops abruptly because only one page has been carried into Reader view). Some sites don't accept a Reader view at all (such every bit Apple, for example).

And here is how to customise your settings so that whenever you visit that site the pages are viewed in Reader fashion:

Get to Safari > Preferences.
Click on the Websites tab.
Click on Reader.
Notice the site yous want to customise (any site you have open up, or have recently visited will exist listed here).
Toggle the drop-down menu abreast that site to On.

A quicker way to do this is to correct-click or control-click on the stack of lines beside the URL and choose Apply Reader Automatically.

Or, equally long as you are on the website you wish to alter the setting for, you can click on Safari > Settings for this Website, and choose Use Reader When Available.

How to surf in individual using Safari

Another useful feature in Safari is the option to use a private browsing window. This doesn't just keep your browsing habits private from someone else who has access to your Mac, it as well means that yous are incognito – in other words even the websites you are visiting don't have any data about yous.

Go to Safari > File > New Private Window (or shift-cmd-n). You can tell if a window is private because the search bar will be grey. Any new tabs you open in this window will be private.

Alternatively, to open a Private Browsing window you tin click shift, command and Due north.

You can tell it'southward a private window considering the URL field will be greyed out.

Hold down Option/Alt while picking Private Browsing to quickly switch it on and bypass the 'Do you desire to switch on Private Browsing?' alarm window if you happen to run across it oftentimes. We have a complete guide to private browsing on Safari here.

For fifty-fifty more privacy, y'all tin can choose to ever search with privacy-obsessed DuckDuckGo equally your default search engine. Go to Safari > Preferences > Search, and click on the Search Engine. And then select Duck Duck Go from the Search Engine dropdown listing. You tin cull from Google, Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo.

How to delete your histroy in Safari

If you didn't search using a private browsing window you can still delete your history and evidence of what y'all were up to.

Click on History.
Coil down and click on Clear History.
You lot can cull to clear history for Today, the last hour, today and yesterday, or all history.
You'll see a alert that Clearing history will remove related cookies and other website data. Basically this is alert you that if y'all get ahead and Clear History y'all may observe that you have to log onto websites, or shopping cart data may disappear.
If you are happy with that then click on Clear history.

We have a complete tutorial all about how to delete your browser history on a Mac here.

How to delete cookies in Safari

Another new feature that came in Safari 11 was the introduction of privacy protection, a feature that'll stop those annoying Amazon adverts showing you lot products subsequently yous've bought them.

Safari actively tries to cake the cantankerous-site tracking data that powers targeted adverts. While it won't completely stop information technology, it should have a noticeable event when using the browser.

Co-ordinate to Apple this isn't an attempt to cake ads, just rather to protect your privacy.

This means that you lot should no longer demand to delete cookies if you desire to stop seeing targeted ads (cookies have also been known to affect the price for appurtenances if you have previously shown an interest in a production so deleting cookies could avoid such practices).

If you want to get a step farther regarding cookies in Safari eleven in that location are some preferences changes yous can make.

Get to Safari > Preferences.
Beside Website tracking click on Enquire websites not to track me.
Beside Cookies and website data click on Block all cookies.

If you aren't using Safari xi yous tin still delete cookies.

Go to Safari > Preferences.
Click on the Privacy tab.
Click on Remove All Website Data…

Hither'due south how to add your own groundwork image to Safari.