Safari bookmark preferences

Bruce Whittington

Well-Known Member
After installing a recent Safari update, I found that the bookmark bar on the left of my screen is now a bar showing open tabs. I have not yet found a way to change a preference or something to have the bookmark bar open as the default. I can change it with a mouse click but it is a nuisance. Am I missing something?
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
Safari has undergone a bit of a redesign on Mac and iOS and one of the new focus points is how tabs are displayed (and how related tabs can be grouped together, which can help improve focus and productivity). For the Mac, there is a new “compact“ view that might take some getting used to, but you can also choose the (previous) ”separate” option in Safari’s preferences under “Tabs.”

I don’t seem to be able to attach screenshots from my Mac on here, but the control to open the “sidebar” is still there as it always was in either view, but now only shows a “bookmarks” folder you can click on to display; it does not open them directly. You can also open the bookmarks by selecting “Show Bookmarks” from the menubar’s “Bookmarks“ menu. At present there is no “hot key” combination to show bookmarks, though I imagine future updates may restore that ability.

In the meantime, perhaps create a “tab group” of some of the bookmarks you always want to have to hand, or use the “show favourite bar” option to have them on-screen all the time. The favourite bar works best for only a “top 10” sort of bookmarks list, not much more than that, so some discipline is required there. Either of these methods will really cut down on the clutter for those of us who have way too many bookmarks and don’t do much “gardening” of that list. :)
 
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