If you’re switching from Chrome or Firefox to Safari, you may want to change some of
Safari’s default settings.
Believe it or not, there are some key features that are disabled by default.
But don’t worry, in this video, I’ll show you my top 10 Safari settings to change for
a better browsing experience.
Hey friends, I’m Tasia Custode, and welcome back to my YouTube Channel where I share tech
tips and app reviews.
Today, I’ll show you why you may want to change some default settings and how to change
some of those key Safari browser settings.
Let’s go!
Number 1 on the list: Reveal full URLs in Safari’s address bar.
Yes, that’s right.
This is not a default Safari setting like it is in Chrome.
So, Safari only shows you shortened URLs in the address bar and the full URL is only revealed
if you click it.
To change this, head to Safari in the top left and select Preferences.
From here, select the ‘advanced’ tab.
Now toggle on the ‘show full website address’ option.
It’s as easy as that.
Number 2 on the list: Show the status bar.
So first, let’s take a look at what that looks like on Chrome.
In Chrome or Firefox, when you hover over a link on a webpage, you automatically get
what’s called a status bar in the bottom left hand corner.
So, it shows us the exact link we’ll be taken to if we click on it.
In Safari, that is off by default.
To turn it on, we’ll head to the menu bar at the top and click on ‘view’ and then
just click on ‘show status bar’.
Voila!
Ok Safari setting number 3: Automatically increase font sizes.
This is a great accessibility feature and is really handy if some webpages have tiny
font that you can’t see well.
So, you may know you can increase or decrease the size of a webpage by hitting command plus
or minus, but if you want to skip that step entirely, you can.
Go to Safari and select Preferences.
Here, head back to your Advanced tab and toggle on the ‘Never use font sizes smaller than’
option.
You’ll now have a drop-down menu where you can select a different default font size.
Number 4: Stop auto-playing videos on all websites.
This is huge.
So let’s head back to our Safari preferences and this time, we’ll select ‘websites’
tab.
From here, let’s select ‘auto play’ from the left menu.
From here, you can either enable this for each individual website, or at the bottom,
you can opto to stop auto-play for all websites in one swoop.
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And with that said, coming in at number 5 on the list is to change the default search
engine.
Safari uses Google by default, which I love, but you may want more privacy.
So, you guessed it, we’re heading back to our Safari preferences and this time we’re
going to click on the ‘search’ tab.
From here, you can click the dropdown arrow next to search engine and select from this
list.
So DuckDuckGo for example may be your engine of choice if you’re concerned about privacy.
And speaking of privacy, Safari setting number 6: perform a privacy check up.
You may not realize how many sites you’ve allowed to access your location, microphone
or camera, but luckily you can check up on that.
So, we’re still in our preferences and we’ll head back to the ‘websites tab’.
In the left hand menu, select camera to see which sites are accessing your camera.
Here you can adjust the permissions for each site individually, choosing ask, deny or allow.
Or, you can change everything in one go at the bottom beside the ‘when visiting other
websites’ option.
So, you can do this for your microphone, screen sharing and your location too, by following
the same exact steps.
Number 7 on the list of best Safari settings: Enable reader view.
This is a great option if you just want to focus on the text on a website, and get rid
of the fluff.
So we are still in our Safari preferences in the websites tab, but this time, let’s
select ‘reader’ from the left menu.
Now, just select ‘on’ in the dropdown next to the website you’d like to set reader
view for.
I recommend only doing it for specific sites you know you want reader view enabled, because
it can break some elements on a page - so think like tables or charts and graphs and
the like.
Safari setting number 8: Stop website notifications.
Yes, you know how sometimes websites ask you if you want to receive notifications, but
who does?
You can turn that off.
Once again, we’ve gone to Safari and Preferences and selected the Websites tab.
Now here on the left, we’re going to select notifications.
And here, toggle off the option to allow websites to ask permissions to send you notifications.
Sweet, sweet relief.
Okay, we are getting close here, and number 9 on the list is to Customize the start page.
This is another setting Chrome and Firefox users love and now you can finally do this
with MacOS Big Sur.
So in the top Safari menu bar, select ‘bookmarks’ and then ‘show start page’.
This is going to open the start page in Safari.
From here, click on the settings option in the bottom right corner to start customizing.
So you can change your background image or hide the privacy report if you want.
There are a bunch of settings here for you to play around with and make it like you want.
And with that, we’ve finally come to number 10 on the list and that’s to show page source.
This is a little trick I’ve used for years, if you want to see a webpage's code, or pull
images or something.
There’s actually a lot you can do with this setting.
So the first thing we want to do is enable the develop menu in Safari.
To do this, let’s head to Safari, Preferences and select the ‘advanced tab’.
From here, toggle on the ‘show develop menu in menu bar option’.
So now at the top we have our develop menu in the menu bar.
So now, from any webpage you want to get the page source for just right click on that webpage
and select ‘show page source’.
And voila, here is all the code for that webpage.
Pretty neat.
So those are my top 10 Safari settings to change for a better browsing experience.
Now I want to hear from you!
What are your favorite Safari settings?
Let everyone know in the comments below.
As always, thanks so much for watching, if you liked this video, I want to know so give
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Thanks for watching, and see ya next time!