Plus, Safari is much more popular than youd think.
If youre reading this in Safari right now, heres how to get the most out of your experience.
When it comes to speed, the web client wars have been flat these days.
So, its all about features, and where Chrome,Firefox, orVivaldistress customization, Safari stresses simplicity.
It does have a few tricks up its sleeve though, like Picture-in-Picture mode and Safari Reader.
With that, lets dig in.
Shift+Command+: Shows all open tabs in a nice grid view.
Shift+Command+Click: Opens a link in a new tab and makes that the active tab.
Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab: Cycles through all your open tabs.
Shift+Command+T: Reopens the last tab or window you closed.
Esc: If youre typing in the URL field/search box, ESC restores the current web page address.
Shift+Command+R:Renders a site in Reader Mode, cutting out ads and other distractions.
you’ve got the option to pull up Picture-in-Picture mode in one of two ways.
Click that and the video drops over to a corner of your screen.
If youdontsee that icon, like onYouTube,right-nudge the video twiceand select Enter Picture-in-Picture.
hit the speaker icon in the URL bar to mute the sound in every tab.
Hold down Alt/Option and hit the speaker icon on a current tab to mute the sound on allothertabs.
Hold Ctrl and press the speaker icon to get a list of all the tabs currently playing audio.
You should never need to go hunting through tabs to find the source of a sound again.
you’re free to customize how this looks a little bit.
When youre in Reader Mode, hit the aA icon in the URL bar.
To do so, just right-click a tab and select Pin Tab.
This shrinks the tab down to a favicon and pushes it to the left of the window.
The Reading List is like Instapaper or Pocket, but inside Safari, no external services or extensions required.
To view your Reading List, nudge the View menu and select Show Reading List, or press Control+Command+2.
Customize the Toolbar
The toolbar is the entire top portion of your Safari window.
By default the toolbar includes a bunch of stuff you might not want.
you’re free to customize it however you see fit though.
Right-click any blank space on the toolbar and select Customize Toolbar.
This pulls up the customization panel.
choose any element, then drag and drop it where you want it to appear in the toolbar.
you might also add in blank spaces with the Flexible Space item.
Safari includes a service called iCloud Keychain, which is Apples attempt at a password manager.Dont use this.
There is no way to export them.
There is no way to share them.
Use a third-party password manager instead.
Go ahead andturn iCloud Keychain off completelywhile youre at it.
Pocket/Instapaper: BothPocket and Instapaper are good bookmarking servicesand are much more robust than Safaris built-in Reading List.
Theres no official way to turn this off or toggle the behavior.
NoMoreiTunes is a third-party extension that shuts down this horrible feature.
Video/Audio Needs User Action:Not a fan of autoplay video?
This toggle attempts to stop them completely.
Just head to the Debug menu and select Media Flags to turn it on.
This will stop videos on sites like YouTube from autoplaying the second you load up the page.
Those are the options I found useful, but you might find other tweaks that make your browsing better.
To change it, bring up the Safari menu, choose Preferences, and then Search.
Pick the search engine you want.
Click View > Hide Sidebar or View > Hide Bookmarks Sidebar to get rid of the sidebar.
Head to Safari > Preferences > Autofill and uncheck all the boxes.
Head to Safari > Preferences > General.
Change these to whatever you want.
Artwork by Sam Woolley.
