9 Alternative Ways To Use the Safari Smart Search Field

You can use the field at the top of the Safari window to do more than just type a website address or start a web search. You can also use it to search your bookmarks or history, switch to tabs and more.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at some alternative uses for the Smart Search field at the top of Safari.
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Now at the top of your Safari browser you've got a field where you normally type something. A lot of people call this different things. You can call it the Address field, the Address Bar, the Search Field, the area at the top where you just type whatever. It has an official name. The Smart Search field and it can be used for two things that most people know about. One of them is that you can simply type a URL which can be a domain name or a page within a domain name. So, for instance, I can type MacMost.com, return, and it goes directly to that page. 
The other thing you can use it for that most people know about is for searching. So you can search for something like keyboard shortcuts macmost and it knows this is a search term mostly because there are spaces in it and URL's don't have any spaces. But also because there is nothing like a dot com or other top level domain indicator there to show that it is a URL. So it will just use this as a search term and use the default search engine. So it gives me search results using whatever search engine I've chosen. 
Now there are some settings we should look at before we go any further. One determines how this looks when you have multiple tabs open. So I'm going to open another tab here and say go to Apple and you can see here I've got two tabs open and the Smart Search field is still at the top and reflects whatever it is that I have selected. So either tab I select and it shows me what the Smart Search field value is there. 
But you could also go to Safari Settings and then go to Tabs and switch to a compact layout. That puts the Smart Search field for each tab in each tab. So, I've got this Smart Search field here and this Smart Search field here and it looks very different. So whichever one you've got the Smart Search field works the same and the tips I'm about to give you will work for it either way. 
Now other settings you should know about are under Search. Go there and you've got your default search engine. I'm going to assume that we're just using Goggle here. A lot of these work if you use other search engines as well. Then you've got Include Search Suggestions, you've got Safari Suggestions, Quick Website Search, and Show Favorites. A lot of the things I'm going to show you will work differently if you've turned any of these Off. So if something isn't working look here in your Search Settings to see what you may have switched off or changed. 
So now, if I were using the Smart Search Field here and searched for something, like let's look for Keyboard Shortcuts Mac. You can see here I get Siri suggested websites and I get Goggle suggestions as well. So this is similar to if you went to the Goggle site and you started typing it would give you suggestions so you could kind of auto complete the search. You can get them right here and you could just use your pointer or with any of the things that appear below the Smart Search Field. You can just use the down arrow, go to what you want, and press Return and it will go to that. So that's just an easier way to search. 
But the Smart Search Field can also give you results that have nothing to do with a regular web search. For instance if you type a term here, notice I get the Siri suggestion here. I get Goggle suggestions. But at the bottom I also get Bookmarks and History. So what will happen here is you'll see Bookmarks here. The Smart Search Field doesn't just search the internet, it searches your own bookmarks. So now you can select one of these and it takes you to the same place as if you were to go to the Bookmarks Menu and look through your bookmarks. Or if you were to turn on this sidebar here and access your bookmarks there or even go to Bookmarks, and Edit Bookmarks. Any of these are great ways to find something in your Bookmarks.
Now also notice it says Bookmarks & History. So what you can  do here is access your history as well as your bookmarks. You could go to History, Show All History and then see your history right here and access it all. There's even a search field at the top right. But you don't need to do that. So, if I just did a search, like this, you can see Bookmarks & History shows me bookmarks and my history. So it's great when you use the in combination with your web search. Like maybe it's a site or page you went two days ago and you decide you want to find it again. You can start a search and maybe you'll get lucky and spot the actual page you visited here in the results under Bookmarks & History. So the bottom line is you never actually have to look at your Bookmarks or your History. You can just use the Smart Search Field to do that.
Now another thing you can use the Smart Search Field for is to go to a Tab. So I just have four tabs open here. But I know some of you have lots of different tabs open. Maybe even in different tab groups. If you go and you search here you could see one of the results. It switched to Tab. So you can use it to quickly find a tab. If you click the Tab Overview here or use the keyboard shortcut to get to is, which is Shift Command Backslash, you see you'll also have a Search Tabs here. But it's easier just to search in the Smart Search Field. 
Another type of tab you'll come up with when you use the Smart Search Field is a tab on another device. So you can see here I've got results that include iCloud Tabs. In this case I've got another device that has this tab open and I can just get to it with the Smart Search Field. You can also find those on your Start page but the idea here is that maybe you don't remember if this was a tab you had previously opened on this machine or maybe it's open right now on another machine or it's in your History or whatever. The Smart Search Field will show you all those results so you can quickly get to it without having to look in multiple places. 
Okay, so the other thing you can do doesn't involve any typing. If you just click on the Smart Search Field you get something that looks a lot like your Start page. You'll notice you get your Favorites. So another way to access a particular folder in Bookmarks. You get Suggestions and you'll also get your Reading List. So this is a quick way to access the Reading List if you want without having to actually bring it up here in the Sidebar. Just click on the Smart Search Field. 
Now another thing you can use the Smart Search Field for is something called Website Quick Search. This is when you use the name of the website to start with. So I'll use MacMost. Then put a space after it. Then you type your search term and then you see, under here, Search Macmost.com. You have to select this. You can't just press Return. This will just do a Goggle search as it indicates here. But if you click on this, and you can use the down arrow to go to it, then it will perform a website search for that term. Notice here the URL at the top is actually showing me it's performing a specialized search for that website. Not a Goggle search for that. Now you can configure this in Safari Settings under Search. You can see enable Quick Website Search and it shows you which websites you've enabled it for. In order to enable it you have to go to that website. Once you're at that website the website sends a signal to Safari saying, hey I've got Quick Website Search enabled. Here's the information you need and it can add it to this list. So you can see here Wikipedia is another Quick Website Search site I have. So I can just type Wikipedia space and then search for something and you could see here Search Wikipedia.org appears and these are Quick Website Searches and I could perform right here, just jumping right to it, skipping Goggle.
Now here's another thing you could do with the Smart Search Field. You can type exactly this. You can type About colon blank. When you do that and include exactly that. NO spaces  or anything, you get a blank page. This dates back to the earliest web browsers. There used to be a whole bunch of different About: things that you can do. But I think the only one that actually works in Safari today is About:Blank to load a blank webpage. This could be useful if you ever just want to blank out the entire tab without getting rid of it. Or perhaps if you're say setting up for a presentation and you want to have Safari just with a blank page to start with when you switch over to it.
Now there is one more thing I want to show you. But this appears to be a new feature in macOS Sonoma. But it may also be coming to a later version of Safari available on macOS Ventura or even earlier. That's you can do a lot of Spotlight things inside of the Smart Search Field. So, for instance, if I typed 2+2 here in macOS Ventura it just gives me Goggle suggestions which aren't very useful because this is just a search suggestion. You could see the second one is actually the correct answer but it actually gives you other things that maybe misleading. Things that people have searched for in the past. But that is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actually getting Spotlight results here in Sonoma. If I type this you could see what I get. It indicates that this is a calculation here. So your Mac is performing the calculation. It is not going out to the internet and getting results. There are some other things like, for instance, conversions that work as well. Even typing the word weather works. So you can see we're going to get some of the Spotlight functionality in the Safari Smart Search Field in the near future. 
There is one more Smart Search Field tip I want to show you. Notice how here at the top it shows the full URL to this webpage. You may not see that. You may just see the name of the website. The setting for this is under Safari, Settings. If you go to Advanced there is a setting here for Show Full Website Address. You can see if I have that turned Off I don't actually see which page it is I'm on. Just the website. But with that on I see the complete URL. So you want to switch this On if that is your preference. I hope you found these tips useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 5 Responses to “9 Alternative Ways To Use the Safari Smart Search Field”

Tim

10 months ago

Hi Gary,
Thanks for all the tips you provide. One thing you did not include in your Safari search tips is that you can have it search a particular site by using, for example, “smart search field site:macmost.com”. This will search for “smart search field” only on your site. The search “wombat site:.au” will search for “wombat” but only on sites which include “.au” in the URL. Regards, Tim

Gary Rosenzweig

Tim: Yes, I'm mentioned that in other videos but I left it out here because it isn't a function of the Smart Search Field, but just Google itself. For instance, you can use it at the Google home page. See https://macmost.com/17-google-search-techniques-you-need-to-master.html

John MacKenzie

9 months ago

Another handy video. Thanks Gary.

Nancy

4 months ago

Hi Gary
My question pertains to searching in Safari - specifically searching for bookmark ...folder ...names.
I tried for an hour or so, ended up finding other people with the same dead end. All my bookmarks, which I use as brain prompts when I'm inspired to dive in on a topic, are in folders nested in other folders that mimic my filing structure.
(on monterey)
Thanks for your help. I haven't watched everything yet!

Nancy: Are you saying you are searching for folder names, not the names of bookmarks? I don't think those come up when you search bookmarks.

9 Alternative Ways To Use the Safari Smart Search Field

Comments: 5 Responses to “9 Alternative Ways To Use the Safari Smart Search Field”

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