In Safari 14 the new Start Page replaces Top Sites. The Start Page has several sections, including your Favorites, Frequently Visited sites and more. You can customize the Start Page to act much like the old Top Sites page, while also including your Reading List and iCloud Tabs pages.
You can also watch this video at YouTube.
Watch more videos about related subjects: Safari (150 videos).
You can also watch this video at YouTube.
Watch more videos about related subjects: Safari (150 videos).
Video Transcript
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use the new Safari 14 Start Page.
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So Safari 14 is the new version of Apple's browser. It works not only in macOS Big Sur but also is an upgrade for Catalina and Mojave. You can check in Safari, About Safari and see your version there. Now you can get to the Start Page many different ways. You could always go to Bookmarks and Show Start Page to get there. When you first upgrade you'll get this welcome message to tell you some of the new features in Safari including Customizable Start Page. I'm going to dismiss that so we just see the Start Page as we normally would.
Now Start Page replaces Top Sites which showed you some of your most frequently visited sites and allowed you to pin ones to that list so that they stayed there. Start page basically has that and much more. You have different sections here. Favorites, Frequently Visited, Privacy Report, Siri Suggestions, Reading List, and iCloud Tabs. You can control which ones are shown by clicking on the controls at the bottom right. You can also Control click in a blank space and you get check boxes next to each one of these.
Now the first is Favorites. Favorites is simply a Bookmarks folder. If you go to Bookmarks and then you look down here to your Bookmarks, Favorites should be first and under it you should see everything in Favorites. You can completely customize this and put what you want there. Let's go to a new page, for instance, and let's say I want to add this to my Favorites. I can go to Bookmarks and Add Bookmark or just Command D. Then I want to make sure the location where I'm saving the Bookmark to is Favorites. Then I can change its name. I can edit it down to make it something simple like that and click Add. Now when I go to the Start page I'll see that site there.
You can completely customize this by going to Bookmarks, Edit Bookmarks, and then look under Favorites here and I'll see everything. I can change the names. I can change the destinations. I can select one and hit the Delete key to delete it. I can move them around as well. So you have complete control over what appears here under Favorites. Here's a tip for using Favorites. If you have a subfolder, like News and Popular are subfolder, inside of the Bookmarks Favorites folder, you can click on them here and it will dive down into it and then you have a Back button. So you can really put a lot of links right here. You can put all of your Bookmarks under Favorites and have access to them on the Start Page.
To create a subfolder go to Edit Bookmarks. Inside of Favorites here you can click New Folder and then create something here and then add Bookmarks to that or you can drag and drop existing Bookmarks into this folder.
Now under this you've got Frequently Visited. Favorites and Frequently Visited can be combined to basically recreate what you had with your Start Page. Favorites would be equivalent to things that are pinned, things you always want to see here at the top. Frequently Visited will show you little previews of websites that you go to often.
Next down we see Privacy Report. This is a new feature in Safari 14. You can click on this and get a report of sites you've visited and things like advertising trackers that they are using.
Under that you've got Siri Suggestions. This will be like Frequently Visited except it will pull out URL's from things like emails and messages that you've gotten recently and show you them here so you can quickly access them.
Under that you've got Reading List. Of course you can always access Reading List here on the left by clicking on this button and then going to the Reading List sidebar and you could see all of that here. But you could also have Reading List included here in your Start Page. You could click on Show More to expand that or Show Less.
Finally you've got iCloud Tabs. So this is the ability to see which browser tabs you have open in other devices. So maybe your iPhone, iPad, and other Mac. You can click here to switch to another device. So this is really handy if you were looking at a webpage on one device, switch to another. You can go to the Start Page and look here and quickly jump to that page.
Now all of this can be customized and you probably do want to customize it because there's a lot of things here. It would be more useful if you only had the things that you wanted. So, for instance, I may keep Favorites and make sure I have the exact sites that I want to see on the Start Page in my Favorites folder in Bookmarks. But I may not want to have Frequently Visited or the Privacy Report. Maybe I don't want Siri Suggestions and it's pretty easy to get to Reading List. But I do like iCloud Tabs. So having just these two turned on would make it most useful for me. Others might have want to have Reading List on and maybe Favorites off and make the Start Page basically a way to get to pages that you have added to your Reading List.
Now any way you customize this you have the ability to add a background. You can turn background image on or off. You can use one of these existing backgrounds here. So for instance I can pick this first one here and it adds it as a nice background. I could also click this button here and then add any image I want. I have a picture here on my desktop I could select that. You could see that gets added as my background. So it's another place to kind of have a wallpaper of some image that you like.
Now I mentioned that there are many ways to get to the Start Page. Of course you can use this menu item here. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to that since it's a menu item. You can also go into Safari Preferences and under General, when you Open New windows, you can have it automatically go to the Start Page. Also when you open new Tabs you can have it go to the Start page.
So all I need to do to get to the Start Page is, if I'm looking at a website and I want to go to the Start Page but I don't want to go away from this website, I just create a new Tab, I'll just use Command T to do that, and you can see my Start Page fills that blank page there. So I rarely ever have to go to Bookmarks, Show Start Page. I just open up a new Tab.
Now here are a few more tips. You can Control click or two finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse to get more options for just about everything in here. So, for instance, if I Control click on anything under Favorites I have the ability to open it in a Tab, a Window. I can rename or change the location for any Bookmark right there. I can Copy the address or delete it.
For Frequently Visited I can also open in a new Tab or Window and Copy and Delete. I could also change Frequently Visited to be icons if I wanted it to be that way instead of a preview. Under Reading List I can Control click and Open in a new Tab or Window and also Remove an item from the Reading List. Under iCloud tabs I can Control click and Open a New Tab or a new Window.
So I hope you found this look at using Start Page useful. I know if you've been used to Top Sites that it's a little bit of an adjustment to make. But I think in general this Start Page is a more versatile page than Top Sites.
We'll have to agree to disagree whether the new start page is an improvement over Top Sites. I am already displaying Favorites above the tab bar, so sticking that on a start page is pretty redundant. I loved the way I could add, rearrange and pin up to 24 sites on the old Top Sites screen. The Frequently Visited "feature" has NONE of that functionality. I have submitted feedback to Apple, but I'm not holding my breath for a change of heart.
I could not agree more with Chris S. How does one leave feedback with Apple?
Mac: https://www.apple.com/feedback/
The text size on my new Safari 14 is tiny. It looks as if I can't go bigger than 14 but I can't even get that. Please help.
Bob: The size of text would depend on the website and their styles. You an always use Reader View if a site's text is too small for you to read.
Gary Is there a way to clear the Privacy Report on Safari 14.0? If so please le me know.
lali: No. Curious -- why would you need to do that?
Gary, the "Show iCloud Tabs" is not showing up as an option in the Start Page. I'm using Safari 14.0 in Catalina.
nick: You need to be using iCloud on multiple machines, have Safari enabled in iCloud (it is by default) and also have some web page currently open on another machine to have anything there.
You can sort of reproduce the "Top Sites" functionality in Safari 14.0. Go to the Start Page, and click on the Settings icon in the lower right corner. Select only "Favorites". Then open the Sidebar and select Bookmarks. Create a new Favorites folder. Name the folder "Start Page". Load the folder up with the sites you want on your Start Page. Then go to General Preferences and select that "Start Page" folder from the "Favorites Shows" dropdown. Quit and restart Safari.
mark: I pretty much say that in this video. But I suggest using both Favorites and Frequently Visited, since Top Sites was essentially that. So, why is it important to have it named Top Sites instead of Favorites? It is just a name.
how do you both add to and delete websites from frequently visited; before it was so easy with top sites
Arthur: You can't "add" them as it is a list off Frequently Visited sites. A site will appear there if you frequently visit it. If you want to add a site to the Start Page, use Favorites. You can remove a site from Frequently Visited, however, by Control+clicking on it.
Since the only way to really get back the features from Safari 13 seems to be downgrading, I think I'll try that route.
You guys know if restoring a Time Machine backup from before Safari 14 should work?
John: That's not a valid option. You'll then be stuck with Catalina and Safari 13 for the rest of your life (until you get a new Mac) without new features or security updates. Eventually it will stop syncing properly with iCloud and website won't work as new HTML features won't be supported. What is so bad about Safari 14?
Gary Rosenzweig: I don't plan to stick with Safari 13 forever, this is meant to be more of a temporary solution while I wait and see if Apple will respond user feedback and bring back those features.
The ones that I'm missing the most are the Top Sites start page, which was central to how i used Safari, and the old Tab System (being able to see both favicon and tab title, and also to close a tab while displaying another tab without having to right-click on it first).
John: Try using the Start Page with Favorites being the sites you had "pinned" previously, and Frequently Visited being the rest of "Top Sites." You can see favicons and titles just like before, and you can close tabs without having to switch -- just click on the X in the tab.
Gary Rosenzweig: It's not possible to edit the "Frequently Visited" section though, only to remove sites that are already there. And the Favourites icons are too small, not having enough space even for the site's title.
Moreover, you can't have both favicon and tab title in the new Tab System, only one of the two, and when favicon are enabled you lose the ability to show the "X" on the tabs while hovering over them.
John: Right, so if you want a site to always appear, add it to your Favorites. You can definitely have the favicon and title. I'm looking at it right now. Maybe you have a ton of tabs open so there is no room? I see the Xs there too, if I move my cursor over them.
I just tested now with a new window: yes you can have favicons+tab title, though the title disappears at the 15th tab... so pretty useless for me (and i guess the majority of people) since i have more than 15 open at all times
John: 15 tabs? I don't know if that's a majority of people. How would you even have room for the favicon and title with lots of tabs? I rarely have more than 3. Anyway, I doubt Apple is going to ever go back to Top Sites.
Well, before the tabs closer to the currently displayed one had full titles and favicon, the others to the left we visible only by sliding horizontally on the tabs bar. Worked like a charm.
And yeah, Top Sites is probably gone for good, and that's the real dealbreaker for me, it was so central to using Safari...
I don't remember which websites I had in my top sites (some, not all). Does Apple have a way for us to retrieve this info? My laptop auto updated and I opened it up to this new mess about Start pages.
AJ: No, there's no way to retrieve that. But you should still have your History and of course your Bookmarks.
Mark, that worked! At first I could not figure out how to create a favorites folder so I looked that up. It was just a regular bookmarks folder that I dragged up to the Favorites section. Thanks!
Really missing Top Sites! I was using it mostly for my leisure daily boomarks. It was so good to have this additional customisable Top Sites section as alternative to more complex Favorites section. ( I'm using my Favorites a lot for my pro research work in very complex way adding subfolders etc. )
A good example of Apples decline
Anyone missing top sites use Mark’s suggestion. It worked! Thanks so much Mark.
I'd already done Mark's suggestion, but it's a poor substitute for Top Sites, which were easy to see. I agree it's the only option, though. I wish Favorites could at least display in the same way as Frequently Visited; that would help. Frequently Visited often drops sites, even though I visit them daily! It's not keeping track of what I do; today, there's only one site! Why can't it at least keep what's recent? I can find no setting to manage this. I miss the functional simplicity of Top Sites.
I too am missing the actual displayed images and easy functionality of Top Sites. The favicons that now appear in the Favorites listing are not the same as the actual favicons of many of my preferred websites. So it takes extra unnecessary time to identify them since there is no image displayed of the website. This feels like another Apple change that serves their technology without taking into consideration their customers. I'll try the alternative mentioned for recreating faux Top Sites.