Safari History

Hi All,

I'm trying to clear my Safari address bar history but nothing I've tried seems to work. I've tried using History>Clear History, Safari>Empty Cache and Safari>Reset Safari.

But while this clears most things, I'm still left with my surf history in the address bar.

Does anyone know how to do this?

if all you are trying to clear the history, go to the History menu and select Clear History at the bottom of the menu.

Edit: didn't see that you have already tried that.

When you say you are left with "surf history in the address bar" do you mean it tries to finish what you are typing? If thats the case you can turn off auto fill in Safari Preferences. Also, any site you have in the bookmarks will try to auto fill in as you type

Hi guys.
I'm starting to think that you're not so good @ these computing things... all you do is recommend people to buy routers. But no one can really explain how to get a mac hooked up on internet through a PC. I dare you to do so.
Love
Sai

saichapman said:

Hi guys.
I'm starting to think that you're not so good @ these computing things... all you do is recommend people to buy routers. But no one can really explain how to get a mac hooked up on internet through a PC. I dare you to do so.
Love
Sai

Click to expand...

Have yo posted this in the incorrect thread

jt003649 said:

I'm still left with my surf history in the address bar.

Does anyone know how to do this?

Click to expand...

Me too! Been to a few places I shouldn't have been and would like to obliterate the tracks.

Safari>Reset Safari>click Reset

saichapman said:

Hi guys.
I'm starting to think that you're not so good @ these computing things... all you do is recommend people to buy routers. But no one can really explain how to get a mac hooked up on internet through a PC. I dare you to do so.
Love
Sai

Click to expand...

Actually, its fairly easy to do this without a router. It is simply easier to do with one.
Had you asked:

A.) in the proper thread, and not hijacking a totally unrelated one
B.) without accusing or insulting others right off the bat
C.) after you had taken the time to search first

I might have been more inclined to help you...
but it would appear that your attitude is less than desireable. My advice....lose the 'tude and more people might be apt to help you.

Texasmeat said:

Safari>Reset Safari>click Reset

Click to expand...

Both I and OP have done this. It does clear up Safari just fine. However, it does not clear the http type-in window -- the long window up at the top. Every time I type in a few letters, the list of previous sites visited starting with those letters still comes up. How to clear that retained history?

Open the Edit next to the Other and go remove all.

Someone has been to places they are not proud with... :headphone

dtravis7 said:

Open the Edit next to the Other and go remove all.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

didn't know about this. However, only one entry showed there -- the last words of my ISP. The remembered names in the address bar still pop up. What am I missing?

asolo said:

Thanks.

didn't know about this. However, only one entry showed there -- the last words of my ISP. The remembered names in the address bar still pop up. What am I missing?

Click to expand...

Did you edit all 3 of the options? If that is not it, I will look around more and get back to you.

Edit: If that does not work, read this. Just found it in a google search. Might be what you are after.

Prevent Safari from Autocompleting
Safari, like many other browsers, tries to help by autocompleting URLs as you type them, basing its choices on your prior viewing habits. While this is useful most of the time, it's frustrating when you want to load a site's home page and Safari takes you to the subpage you last viewed. If you'd like to limit these autocompletions, start by choosing History: Clear History, and then quitting Safari. In your user folder, go to Library: Safari and locate the history.plist file. Select the file, choose File: Get Info, and then click on the Locked option. Now close the window.

When you relaunch Safari, autocompletion will still work as expected on bookmarks, and it will also work for URLs you visit in the current session. But the next time you quit and restart Safari, the autocompletion data will vanish -- it can't be written to the locked .plist file. To return to normal autocompletion, deselect the Locked option in the history.plist file's Get Info dialog box.

NikBhat said:

Someone has been to places they are not proud with... :headphone

Click to expand...

Well, yeah. Gotta fess up. However, I really don't want to worry about it. And I've always resented PC's keeping track of everywhere I've been -- the stuff of many personal embarrassments if I'm to believe what I read.

For example: 2 years ago I searched the web looking for a camisole (sp?) for my 92-year-old mother. It was a particular piece of clothing that she liked better than any other. The tag on the garment said "Olga". You already know what happened. There are hundreds of internet porn sites keyed to respond to "Olga". I have little doubt all of them are still available as "evidence" on my PC hard-drive. I belatedly learned "Olga by Warners" was more productive -- but only by a little.

If you want a sample of your own, try researching "breast cancer" and see what you have to wade through.

As regards my most recent concern, I did, indeed, go to some bad places. However, whatever anyone else may think, that is my own private business -- or error, in this case. I don't want that "evidence" perpetually preserved on my HD. Would you? How to get rid of it?

private browsing function in safari is good for stuff like that.

also you can delete safari's preference file and doa lot of what has been mentioned above
-chris

dtravis7 said:

Did you edit all 3 of the options? If that is not it, I will look around more and get back to you.

Edit: If that does not work, read this. Just found it in a google search. Might be what you are after.

Prevent Safari from Autocompleting
Safari, like many other browsers, tries to help by autocompleting URLs as you type them, basing its choices on your prior viewing habits. While this is useful most of the time, it's frustrating when you want to load a site's home page and Safari takes you to the subpage you last viewed. If you'd like to limit these autocompletions, start by choosing History: Clear History, and then quitting Safari. In your user folder, go to Library: Safari and locate the history.plist file. Select the file, choose File: Get Info, and then click on the Locked option. Now close the window.

When you relaunch Safari, autocompletion will still work as expected on bookmarks, and it will also work for URLs you visit in the current session. But the next time you quit and restart Safari, the autocompletion data will vanish -- it can't be written to the locked .plist file. To return to normal autocompletion, deselect the Locked option in the history.plist file's Get Info dialog box.

Click to expand...

Did that. Can't say what the future may hold but for now ALL the previous stuff is still there. Very annoyed. Seems to me there should be some simple way to delete it. I'm just not getting it. ** hum.

What's the deal? Am I the only one who has my address bar loaded with undeletable previous sites visited?

did you try that trick in the library i posted?

dtravis7 said:

did you try that trick in the library i posted?

Click to expand...

Yes. That's what I was responding to in last post.

Hi Guy,

New to Mac have been a PC power for the past 10 years and switched to the better side of computing by treating myself with a 20 inch Intel Mac. Not only mac have a better look that PC but OS X is some piece of sofware. Anyway here is my query Safari has some really cool feature such as private browsing. I was wondering if there is a setting to have private browsing as the default setting rather that having to swiching it every time I wich to surf privately ?

Welcome here Angel99! Enjoy your stay!

I was curious so I googled it up and I found this: Safari Private Browsing:

A member posts: Haven't tried it for myself, but should work.

To do this more easily, you should have aApple's Developper Tools installed so you have the Property List Editor, which allows you to look at the plist files in a clearer manner. However you can open the plist files in programs such as BBedit, OnmiOutliner as well.
So what you need to do is to go to your ~/Library/Preferences folder and open (with one of the above mentionned programs) the file called com.apple.safari.plist. Go down the lost of items and find WebKitPrivateBrowsingEnabled and change the value for it from No to Yes. Logically this should change the default once you've saved the file.

Another member replies:

A "solution" for this may be to create a small script in which you put in a "defaults" command that changes the Private browsing option and then fire's up Safari. Then you put that in the Dock and start Safari from there when you wish to startup in Private mode. That would be a "quick and dirty" fix for this and at least wouldn't be a security risk either.

Click to expand...

(Check the full thread for the complete exchange of ideas, it might help you understand better).

And I also found this article posted at Mac DevCenter, Homebrew Safari [Updated].

Simply put, it seems you need to put together an AppleScript. The last link I posted here has a script ready but I didn't take the time to read if all went well with the script. I would imagine so, since this is posted at O'Reilly's...

Hope this helps. :girl: