Don’t know whether you’d consider it to be another ‘trick’ of the URL bar, but what about SnapBack allowing you to quickly return to the original URL after you’ve wandered off on numerous tangents either within the site or elsewhere? Quite a useful little tool.

Does anyone know how to clear out the URL bar’s History?

Even though I clear out my history using the “Clear History” command, Safari still remembers visited URL’s in the URL bar. I have some URL’s that I visited that were the wrong page (because of a typo, for instance “goooogle.com”) and they still keep coming back as suggestions.

@ceeinbc, great idea, totally forgot about how awesome ’snapback’ is. I am not sure where we will add it in, but we certainly will have to cover this feature now.

@Ron, you clear the URL bar mini history by clearing your normal history. Go to the History menu, and the last item is “Clear History”.

You can also clear your google search history as well, by clicking on the small magnifying glass in the google search box.

You cannot clear out the Safari URL prompts by simply “clear history”. You also would have to delete all bookmarks, empty the cache, and trash the metadata. Easier workaround is to simply press the space bar once before typing the URL. No prompts appear.

Is there a keyboard shortcut to add the “http://www.” and the “.com” to an address like in Firefox (Command+Enter)?

My Safari URL Bar doesn’t work.Type an address in, click enter and nothing , same with Safari search bar. Iam the administrator on the system. Any ideas ?

@Joseph, Thanks for clarifying, I should have taken more effort to explain in detail what happens. As far as I know, and in tests, clearing your cache will have no affect on the URL auto complete. If by meta data you mean the bookmarks, you are correct. I am trying to think of what other meta data Safari would store that would influence this, and come up short.

That being said, it is important to understand, URL auto-complete will ALWAYS search out any of your bookmarks, and try those first. As far as I know, there is no way to clear those, other than deleting them, which would be less than useful.

Thanks for keeping me on my toes. Glad to have another reader.

@Michael, you really do not need to add the ‘www’. If you look at our site, we use a non www version, and any attempts to put in the www will redirect you to the non www version.

Other sites will offer one, the other, or both.

In the case of a site that uses www and not the non www form, safari will try to add it on automatically, there is nothing you need to do with any special keys.

Type in ‘amazon’ and press return, it will first look for amazon.com, and then add in the http://www.amazon.com all in one automatic move.

@Dan, it is probably a bad preference file. We just have not gotten to that point in the tutorials yet. And I want to cover basic troubleshooting in so much more than I can post in a comment.

To start, make a new account, call it “test”, or “sample” or whatever you want. It is not important. Log into your new test account, see if the problem follows you.

If it does not, you know it is something in your admin account, and we can show you what prefs to toss out. If it does follow you, there are other places to look, but it would be rare for that to happen.

Metadata folder for Safari is found in the ~/Library/Caches/Metadata folder.

@Joeseph, I just cleared the history, and my bookmarks, and all data in the MetaData directory was subsequently cleared as well. Do you find there is other meta data in there that has influence on the url quick complete? If that is the case, let us know so I can accurately adjust the comments here.

As it is now, a clear of history should cover 99% of the trouble, and a clear of your bookmarks would cover the rest. Not that clearing bookmarks is a good idea.

Thanks for the spacebar trick, I am sure some will find it useful.

Test account works fine. Which preferences should be cleared . Thanks , Dan

@Dan, good news.
In all cases, make a backup of the files I am telling you to delete, this means making a copy of them elsewhere then where they are now.

Start with quiting Safari
Go to your Home folder, into the Library folder, into the Preferences folder, and delete com.apple.Safari.plist

Open Safari, see if that fixes it.

If that does not, we can dig deeper into more of the prefs that Safari holds, but usually, that one will do it.

Need to dig deeper.That one didn’t work.Dan

Scott ,as an additional note, “Go to your Home folder, into the Library folder, into the Preferences folder, and delete com.apple.Safari.plist”,whenever I reopen Safari this folder reopens.Am I doing something wrong?

@Dan, no, you are not doing anything wrong, if a folder re-opens, while strange, I would not worry about it.

So, to start, I want to make sure you understand that all this relies on Safari being quit, if you do not, it will generally write back the same corrupt preference data again.

1) Quit Safari
2) Delete same file above: com.apple.Safari.plist
3) In the same area is com.apple.Safari.RSS.plist
While I suspect this has nothing to do with it, move that out as well, you can always put it back
4) At /Library/Caches/Metadata is a folder called “Safari”, this holds bookmark and history data, lets move that elsewhere as well
5) There is also a Folder, “Safari” right in your Library folder, move that aside also.

When I say move aside, I just mean put them on your desktop, or in your trash, just do not empty it. We are going to reset Safari, and you will lose all Safari data, like bookmarks.

If you get it working again, you can slowly add back items until you narrow it down to which was the bad item.

Finally, if that does not do it, it could be some 3rd party tool you installed, do you know any Safari enhancements you have put in?

Once you move all those files out, start Safari and see how it goes.

Scott,Thanks for all of your help.The source of my problems was a program called Sogudi. Once removed every thing worked as expected.Put Sogudi back in, problem returned. Needless to say it is now removed forever. Thanks again for your help and time. Dan

@Dan, ahh yes, Sogudi, I used it once before, but it caused me some issues so I removed it. Sorry to take you down the prefs deletion path, I should have first asked if there were any 3rd party apps you installed for Safari.

Glad you got it worked out.

Great site Scott. Not sure if you covered this already, but if you use Apple Mail you can drag the favicon of your current Safari window straight to the Mail icon in the dock, let go and a new email window pops open with the link embedded ready to send to whomever you want. Mail must be running though.
Bob

@Bob, no, we have not hit mail.app yet. It very well may be much later. I just switched to it from Entourage, and it is taking me some time to get 100% up to speed with some of it’s nuances.

I have a strong feeling most people use web mail. Given that a large percentage of our newsletter subscribers use aol, and about the same use yahoo, and about the same use hotmail, yet few use gmail or have email at their own domain, I can say, most people just use the web.

I am a huge fan of local email, and a huge hater of web email, so I know the importance of mail.app and other apps like it.

We will get to it, but first we have to get users to the point where they would even know what a pop or smtp server is.

Thanks for the tip about dropping a URL into mail, you can also use the two menu items in Safari to mail a link, or mail the entire page as well.

I am working in a French-Canadian environement. This sais, the URL zone or bar seems to load for an abnormally long time; the blue line hands on… But the pages seem to be loaded if i CLICK or work in them. Any reason for thos behavior. My Internet providr, my wireless router (problem is in botn connection0, Safari bug,
Au secours…

I am working in a French-Canadian environement (Mac
OS 10.5.2). This said, the URL zone or status bar seems to load for an abnormally long time; the blue line hangs on… But the pages seem to be loaded correctly if i CLICK or work in them. Any reason for this behavior. My Internet provider, my wireless router (problem is in both type of connection, Safari bug,
Au secours…

Reposted: I have and old keybord (ISO) ordered at Apple Canada. I do not like the aluminium one delivered with the iMac. Mistype errors too easily made, as in the previous post!

@Bertrand, If you get a status bar (blue bar) that is not loading all the way, open up the Activity window in Safari, it is in the “Window” menu. This can show you exactly which files are not loading, and perhaps offer a way to figure out what is going on.

Certain sites, myspace being one of them, are prone to this, and a certain router setting. Routers have a setting called “SPI”, Netgear enables it by default, I am not sure about the rest like Linksys.

The SPI (Stateful Packet Inpection) Firewall protects your LAN against Denial of Service attacks. This should only be disabled in special circumstances.

This has always been a source of exactly the issues you describe to me, taking it off, and I have no issues. I can also say, from a network perspective, it is not entirely needed on a Mac.

Scott,

Thank you for the quick reply and indications; I went back to configuring my SMC router (it had been a long time, surviving my various upgrades), and modify certain parameters, per your comments. It seems to correct the problem.

I will keep an eye (or two) on the matter.

Merci encore,

Bertrand

Scott,

I watched the ACTIVITY window and noted that the slowness in the URL bar happens whenever a Google type of element appears (very long…). For example (2 ex.):

http://pagead.l.google.com/pagead/ads?c….

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/….

I did not notice regular or consistent improvement with the SPI unchecked, but will try at different times.

Thanks again.

Bertrand

@Bertrand, those are links to google ads, which just means, for some reason, your connection was not able to load them.

A couple potential issues could be your internet connection has them blocked. Google was just having issues and the route to them was dead.

Does it happen on the same site, or all sites? Does it happen on our site, as we run the same google ads?

Scott,

I’m having the same problem as Bertrand, but the Activity window indicates that the page is completely loaded. As far as I can tell, this happens to most pages. The bar reaches about 75% of the way across, and then just sits there. The pages seem to operate as usual.

Note – I’m technically fairly clueless, so please use simple words. I pay attention, but don’t always get the technical stuff.

@juli, what version is your Operating System? What is your connection to the internet, looks like Comcast I think?

If you look closer at the Activity Window, are you sure you are seeing 100% of all items loaded?

Scott,

Thanks for your reply. I am running OS X 10.4.11 and Safari 3.0.4 (523.12) . I do have Comcast cable modem.

Looking at the activity window, for this site, it shows 25 items loaded. That’s all, isn’t it?

I have checked other sites, and it seems that this one and gmail are the ones that most consistently have the blue bar. Gmail is now showing 6 of 8 items loaded, and has been spinning it’s little wheel pretty much all day.

I hope this is helpful, and thank again for taking the time to reply.

@Juli, well, at least we have narrowed it down to being an issue with loading google ads and google related things. Have you by chance disabled Javascript in your Safari Preferences? Or perhaps you have told it to disable cookies?

Scott,

Narrowed down is good! I have Javascript enabled, and have checked “always accept cookies.” Should I change these?

Juli

@juli, a new Safari came out today, perhaps try software update, if that does not do it, we may have to run some more interesting tests, which I will follow up with you on via email. Let me know if the software update works for you.

Scott,

I updated Safari, and the problem appears to have been solved!

Thanks again for your help.

Juli

Rons comment on 2/14/8 requests info to delete addresses from the url bar. My cents worth is that if it shows up in the URL it is bookmarked or is a favorite. Open the book symbol and hunt around ad when you find it in this manner click it (highlight) and then simple tap the delete key.

I visit a lot of australian sites, whose domains mostly end in .com.au . Is there a way I can alter the default .com to end with .com.au ??

@Chandni, I can not seem to find a way to do this. Sorry.

Trying to dray and drop a name out of the URL bar, I accidently pulled the bar completely out in a puff of smoke because unknowingly, command was activated with sticky keys on for my carpal tunnel. How do I get it back? Thanks Safari help and Apple for being so useless again.

@Robby, try the View menu, and select “Show Toolbar”

Thanks Scott for getting back to me.
This happened to me once before but somehow I was able to figure it out for myself then. After writing you, I got to the link below and got the answer. Robby
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080705183754AAgP6FG

I am having the same problem Dan was having, except that the problem follows me to a new account. What can I do?

This is probably a dead thread, but I was wondering if there is a plugin or something for Safari that will do smarter URL autocompletion like Firefox does? By that I mean autocompletion of the URL based on the typed phrase existing anywhere in the URL (and I think page title as well), not just the first part of the domain name?

For example, I would like to type “phpm” and have it select “http://localhost/phpMyAdmin”. At the moment I get nothing, and have to type “local” to get it to find “http://localhost” first.

Treating the URL bar like a bookmark/history search autocomplete would make it much more functional. In fact the only reason I use Safari as my main browser at the moment is because the combination of Firefox and Gmail maxes out my CPU and sends my laptop fans into leaf-blower mode. If it wasn’t for that I’d just use Firefox and be done with it

This blog comments thing is broken – I wrote a long post and it said I sent a duplicate, which isn’t likely. Tried with a different email address and got the same feedback.

@Scott, in regards to your having issues with the comment system, it is probably that your browser is giving you a false reading or you are clicking the submit button more than once. If you are not, something is causing that behavior to happen.

@scott

This is probably a dead thread, but I was wondering if there is a plugin or something for Safari that will do smarter URL autocompletion like Firefox does? By that I mean autocompletion of the URL based on the typed phrase existing anywhere in the URL (and I think page title as well), not just the first part of the domain name?

I would take a look at Safari 4 Beta, it apparently has a much redesigned URL completion mechanism. It may not be just like FireFox, though you should give it a look and see if it will work for you.

For example, I would like to type “phpm” and have it select “http://localhost/phpMyAdmin”. At the moment I get nothing, and have to type “local” to get it to find “http://localhost” first.

It is sort of my opinion this is a bit of an abuse of the URL bar to expect this. This is a pretty narrow case which would not be of much value to many others.

I can offer some suggestions.

1) Create a bookmarklet, put it as the first item, then you can get to that url with a command-1

2) Drag and drop the url to your desktop to save it as a .webloc file. You can then use any number of tools to bind it to a keyboard shortcut, such as control-P. FastScritps will do this and has a free version.

3) Set up your /etc/hosts file so that the hostname is ‘phpm’. You will have to add in some Apache config changes to make it all happen, but then you can get to your url with http://phpm/

4) Probably the best thing to do is just install something like LuanchBar, which I have recently fell in love with. I can get to google by typing “g”, If you wanted to get to your site with the phpm it would learn that. But it does more, and allows the same short keys to be used to get to files, folders, apps, and pretty much anything you can imagine.

Treating the URL bar like a bookmark/history search autocomplete would make it much more functional. In fact the only reason I use Safari as my main browser at the moment is because the combination of Firefox and Gmail maxes out my CPU and sends my laptop fans into leaf-blower mode. If it wasn’t for that I’d just use Firefox and be done with it

I would look at Safari 4 beta, the URL auto complete system is entirely reworked, so much that it is a talking point for their data pages at apple.com. If Firefix is maxing out your CPU on gmail, something is wrong, you should try to solve it.

Sorry if I wasn’t clear, but I think you are missing my point, which is that URL autocompletion should be identified by keyword. The example I gave was one contrived to illustrate the point that the domain name is one of the least semantic keywords in a URL. And the real value of autocompleting URLs is to quickly find those pages you don’t visit every day.

For example say you came across a great article on penguins and a few days later you want to prove a point to someone else (OK another contrived example, but bear with me!) The URL for the web page is http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildlife/penguins/index.shtml

Now the only part of that URL you are likely to remember is the word penguin, and almost certainly not arcticconnection.com

So treating URL autocompletion as a keyword search on your URL history and bookmarks may not be screamingly obvious, but incredibly useful just the same. Relevancy can be increased by multiplying the score by the number of times you’ve visited the page in the last month or so.

It’s one of those things that once you start using it you wonder how you ever got by without it. In fact I’ve almost stopped using bookmarks on Firefox altogether because every page I visit regularly is in my history and at the top of the list, and pages I almost never visit I just search for.

@Scott, like I suggested before, I would look at the Safari 4 beta and see if that works for your needs.

If there is still anybody here …

What I cannot figure out is why autocompletion works only with URL (actually only the beginning of it…) and not the name you saved it in your bookmark library …

If you saved Scott’s penguin site into a “Penguin” bookmark, it is useless unless you make a search in your bookmark library …

So why using a name to save those address ? IE was already recognizing those ten years ago!

Or if there’s a trick I missed in Safari4, please let me know.
cheers!

@Doc, as far as I know, auto completion does not work with Bookmark names. You may want to look into openDNS, which is free, and allows you to set up url keywords, so you could type in “foo” in the url, and it would take you to whatever url you want it to.

I don’t know what i did but there is no url box at all. where there would be a spot for the url and google search its just blank.
what do I do?

@Connor, you pressed command-| If you press it again, it will come back. Or you can go to the “View” menu in Safari, and select “Show Toolbar”.

Scott,
Well, we got some serious auto-complrtion in the URL bar in Safari 5.0.
While it would be ok as an option, I want to disable the feature but can’t find anything on the www to tell me if it can be done.

MacBook OSx 10.6.4

Hi jurymac,
I just looked through the entire Safari 5 preferences plist file for any reference to the new features in the URL bar. I was not able to find any mention of it.

For the time being, until someone makes an extension that changes the behavior of the URL bar, if that is even within the scope of what extensions can do, I am not aware of any way to change the behavior.