MacMost: Safari

The Safari Reading List on Mac, iPhone and iPad is a better way to save a web page to read later than bookmarking. The page will be added to the left sidebar where you can easily return to it. Items sync across your devices using iCloud and you can also save them to read even when you are offline.

Most Mac users are browsing the web using either the built-in Safari browser or they have installed Google's Chrome browser. Both browsers have their advantages. Each works well within their own Apple or Google ecosystem. Safari has some clear advantages when it comes to MacBook battery life and privacy. Chrome works better for Google Apps users and those that also have Android or Windows devices.

Clearing the browser cache was simple in Safari, but the menu command is gone. However, you can still clear the cache, and do so more efficiently by clearing cache, cookies and other items on a per-website basis. You can also bring back the Empty Cache command. Clearing a website's cache and cookies is one way to fix things when a website starts misbehaving.

If you are having trouble accessing a website, it could be because of a problem with your DNS cache. To reset your DNS cache on your Mac, you need to enter a command using the Terminal. In most cases, this will work, especially if you are using macOS Sierra, High Sierra, or Mojave. Earlier versions of OS X may need some additional commands as well.

When you download a file in Safari, the file is saved in the default location, usually the Downloads folder. You can select any location as the default in Safari Preferences. You can also have Safari ask you each time you download a file and then you can select the location and even change the filename. You can also bring up the context menu in most cases and decide whether to use the default location or a specific location each time.

Websites use notifications to send you alerts when there is a new post or just to get your attention when not at the site. Sites have to ask for your permission to send these notifications, but it is easy to accidentally allow them if you are not paying attention. You can turn them off by going to your browser settings. Learn how to turn website notifications off in Safari, Chrome and Firebox.

The Favorties Bar in Safari can be a hard-to-read line of small text. But you can always add any Emoji character, just like you can with folder and file names. Finding the perfect emoji for a bookmark is sometimes easy and at other times challenging. The result is a colorful and easier-to-read Favorites Bar and Bookmarks menu.

Some people like to put web location files on the Desktop or in the Dock as an alternative to using browser bookmarks. A better idea may be to create a folder to hold web location files and then add that to the Dock. You can set it to List mode and then use file names and folders to further organize your Dock bookmarks.

While private browsing windows do not really give you privacy, they are useful for a variety of things. You can use them to log into the same site as multiple users, or to view your own site or accounts as someone who is not logged in at all. You can search and shop without building up a history that can haunt you later on. It is also useful for giving presentations and getting around soft paywalls.

It can be tricky to get Flash content on a webpage to work in Safari. If you need Flash, make sure you get it only from the official Adobe site. Then only update Flash from System Preferences, never follow a link to update or install Flash. To use Flash, sometimes you get a button to activate the content, and other times you need to turn on Flash for a website in Safari's preferences.

You can search a specific website using Safari's address field and Quick Website Search. Make sure this feature is enabled and then you can check the list of sites already added. You can add most other sites by performing a native search at that site. Once added, when you type the domain name of that site and a search term you then have the option to search that site directly instead of through a search engine. This works on Mac and iOS.

You can easily save a portion of a webpage or document as a streamlined PDF or Image file. However, many people take screenshots instead, which are poor resolution. Using the Open In Preview function in the Print Dialog, you can quickly and easily convert portions of webpages or documents to smooth and scalable PDFs or even higher resolution images.

You can set your Safari home page to any page on any site. However, this won't actually affect much unless you also set other options in your Safari Preferences. Even then, when you quit Safari and relaunch it, you'll probably just see the same pages you had open previously, unless you close all of Safari's windows before quitting.

Safari keeps a cache of files to speed up page loading and minimize bandwidth usage. For the most part it maintains itself. But if you need to clear the cache while publishing or developing a website, you can do so using one of several methods in Safari. You can clear all data from a specific site, enable the Develop menu to clear the cache with a keyboard shortcut, or manually delete the cache files in the Finder.

In addition to adding quick ways to access web sites in Safari bookmarks and the Favorites bar, you can also put links outside of Safari that will launch Safari and go directly to that page. You can add them to the Desktop or any Finder location. You can also put them in the Dock as a single link or a folder of links. You can add them to the Menu Bar with the help of the Script Menu.

You can see which web pages you have open on all of your devices using iCloud Tabs. This makes it easy to start reading a page or searching the web on one device, and then continue on another. iCloud Tabs works between your Macs, iPhone and iPad, as long as you are using the same Apple ID for all of them.

The Top Sites feature in Safari allows you to quickly bring up previews of the sites you visit the most and jump into any one of them. You can manually pin sites to appear in Top Sites and arrange them as you like. This is a good alternative to keeping many tabs open at all times as some users do.

If you wish to increase your level of browser privacy you may want to consider the DuckDuckGo extension for Safari. This will give each website you visit a privacy grade and also block tracking on websites.

The new version of Safari allows you to sorts bookmarks inside of folders alphabetically. While a small feature, this is something many people ask about on a regular basis. You can sort by name or address.

Have you every wanted to print only a portion of a web page, such as an airline ticket? Or, have you ever wanted to print or share a small portion of a Pages or Numbers document? You can do this easily by using the print function to send the document as a PDF to Preview. Then in preview you can crop out everything you don't need before printing or sharing it. A few clicks can save a lot of ink.