Videos by Category: Safari

Preferences in the Safari browser in High Sierra will remember important settings on a per-site basis. You can stop videos from autoplaying, set zoom levels, enable plug-ins, and turn on Reader view for a website and it will remember those settings for the next time you visit the same site. It is easy to review and manage these settings.

Safari bookmarks seem straight-forward. But you can do some creative things to get more use from them. You can use emoji in bookmark names, create folders and subfolders, and even add descriptions to bookmarks to make research easier.

You can use the address bar in Safari to search with your default search engine. In Safari Preferences you can set this to Google, Yahoo, Bing or DuckDuckGo. But you can browser to any search engine you want and use it outside of the address bar. You can also set your default search engine to almost any other site using Safari extensions.

You can customize the toolbar in the Finder and many apps. You can add buttons, spaces and other controls. Some apps have a large selection of buttons you can add. You can also revert to the default set easily. See what is available in the Finder, Mail, Pages and other apps.

In Safari you have a Favorites list that is part of bookmarks but also has some special features. You can see them at the top of your browser window, on a special home page and in other places. Learn how to add, edit and delete items from Favorites.

Using the Zoom function in Safari can make text easier to read, but it also enlarges image and the entire page layout, often breaking the design of the page and making it impossible to see everything. By holding down the Option key, you can change zoom to text-only zoom and only enlarge the text size, while keeping images and other elements the same.

Many people misuse the browser address bar by typing in the names of sites instead of complete URLs. In the address bar you can type a search term, domain name, or a full webpage address. But if you simply type in the name of a site, you will get search results instead of going to that site.

If you do a lot of web searching, you may want to use the Safari Snapback feature to jump back to the page of search results. You can also use Safari tabs to keep search results around and load multiple result pages at once.

If you need to grab the entire contents of a webpage, not just the visible portion, you can do so easily with the Export as PDF or Print functions. This saves the contents of the page as a single PDF file, which can be easily viewed offline and on other devices. This comes in handy for students who need to take online notes with them.

Split View on the iPad lets you show two apps side-by-side. But there is a special Split View mode that lets you show two Safari windows side-by-side. You can even have multiple tabs and move them between the two sides.

While many Mac users know about using Split View for sharing the screen with two apps, you can also use it to split the screen between two windows of the same app. You can put two safari windows on either side of your screen and still have access to tabs and the toolbar of each.

By default Flash apps are not going to appear on webpages in Safari. However, it is easy to enable them by clicking on the prompt or using Safari's Preferences. In some cases, using Preferences may be the only way to get Flash working properly on a site.

In addition to IDs and passwords, you can autofill your name and email address into forms with Safari. This is handy for filling out simple forms where you are not logging into a site. You can change which information is available in the Contacts app.

If you need to log into two different accounts at the same website at the same time, you can use Safari's Private windows. Each private window acts like a separate browser so the two accounts won't interfere with each other. This is useful for managing multiple social media accounts, checking multiple bank statements or web-based email accounts at the same time, and other uses.

With Safari in El Capitan you can subscribe to news feeds in the left sidebar and see an aggregated list of items that update automatically. You can also include Twitter and LinkedIn feeds. This allows you to see the news from your favorite sources all in one place without needing to go to individual web sites.

When you need to upload a photo to a web page, you are first given the option to select a file. But you can use the Media, Photos option to instead select a photo from your Photos Library. This saves you the steps of needing to export the photo and then delete the file later.

If you are trying to read an article online and the font is too small, too light, or other page elements are too distracting, you can use Safari's Reader View to focus on just the text and other primary elements of the article. It is easy to turn Reader View on and off. Once on, you can adjust the font, font size and background color.

If you have a website you should make sure it looks good on a variety of devices like phones, tablets and various computer display sizes. You can use Safari's Responsive Design Mode to preview your site at various screen sizes.

Safari in El Capitan allows you to see which tabs are currently playing sound. You can click to mute or unmet individual tabs. You can also Control+click to see a list of tabs with sound. This is handy when a tab you are not viewing starts playing sound and you need to find it to turn the sound off.

A new feature in Safari for El Capitan is the ability to save web pages you frequently visit as a pinned tab. Pinned tabs will always appear to the left side of the Safari tab bar as small icons. You can access them like other tabs, but they will automatically appear on any new Safari window you create. If you click on an external link in a pinned tab, the other site will open in a new tab. Plus, pinned tabs are persistent across all windows, matching the same page and page position.

If you find yourself stuck on a web page in Safari that is claiming that you are infected with a virus or that your computer needs to be scanned, it is a scam. But sometimes you can find that these pop-up warnings are hard to get rid of. Even if you quit and restart Safari, they reappear. It is easy to restart Safari without returning to the same page that starts the cycle all over again. You can also get help from Apple if you are infected with a more serious problem.

Safari lets you create strong passwords and save them when you create new accounts or log into existing ones on the web. You can access these passwords in Safari preferences or using the Keychain Access app. Thanks to iCloud, these passwords can sync across your devices allowing you to use strong secure passwords on your iOS devices as well as your Macs.

You can quickly find information inside of long web pages using Safari's Find function. By default you are searching only for the letters at the start of words, but you can change this to search for any place the letters appear. You can also select some text in a web page and then search for other occurrences of that text.

With Yosemite and iOS 8 you can once again use RSS feeds. The left sidebar allows you to add the feed for a web site you are viewing. You can add many feeds and see an aggregated list of items from those feeds, as well as from social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. This works both in Yosemite on the Mac and iOS 8 on the iPad.

Using the developer tools built into Safari, you can see how long it take to load a web page, and which elements of the page may be holding things up. Developers can use this tool to optimize their web sites.

There are a variety of buttons and keyboard shortcuts that you can use to quickly create, close and navigate between tabs. How some of these work depends on your Safari preference settings. If you use tabs and multiple windows, these tips should help you optimize your web viewing.

When sharing links with friends, long URLs can cause issues as they take up a lot of space in tweets and text messages, and can wrap across multiple lines in emails. You can use one of the many free URL shortening services to turn any URL into a very short one. These will redirect to the original page. The danger in using URL shorteners is that you can't be certain where a link leads. But browser extensions and the URL shortening services can help with that.

Safari 6 has some great tools for developers, including the Safari Snippet Editor. This tool allows you to write HTML code and see the results instantly. You can include tags as well as styles and scripts. It could be useful for those learning HTML or JavaScript, and for those starting a new HTML project.

You can store bookmarks in Safari in four places: the bookmarks bar, the bookmarks menu, custom bookmarks folders and Top Sites. See how to create custom folders and how to choose where to store bookmarks and how to move and re-arrange them.

Mountain Lion offers four different ways to send web pages from Safari through Mail. You can send a plain link, as before, or send the page as HTML, a PDF or Reader content only. The trick is knowing where to select which of the four options you want.