10.5: Bypass Safari's Private Browsing confirmation box

Nov 06, '07 10:10:00AM

Contributed by: antipasta

Do you dislike the confirmation dialog that appears whenever you select Private Browsing from Safari's main menu? Here's how to get rid of it, and enable/disable private browsing via a keyboard shortcut:

  1. In the Keyboard Shortcuts section of the Keyboard and Mouse panel of System Preferences, press the + button to add a new keyboard shortcut.
  2. For the application, choose Safari, and for the menu shortcut, type Private Browsing -- notice you are not typing this with the ellipsis (...) as it appears in Safari's menu.
  3. Choose the shortcut you would like to use to activate private browsing. Press Add.
  4. Quit and relaunch Safari if it's running.
Now when you use this shortcut, it will activate private browsing without the annoying pop-up confirmation. Also, there will now be two Private Browsing entries in the Safari menu: the one without the "..." at the end (and which shows your keyboard shortcut) won't trigger the popup. Enjoy!

[robg adds: This does not work in the 10.4 version of Safari 3. I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature, but it's pretty useful. Ignore this; error in testing!]

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