Disable the WebKit default home page

May 06, '08 07:30:03AM

Contributed by: robg

In my job, I jump between browsers quite regularly, usually Firefox, Camino, and Safari. As we've covered here before in various hints, you can actually run a "future" version of Safari by downloading and installing WebKit, which is a special version of Safari using newer builds of the WebKit web browser engine. WebKit builds can be faster than the currently-released version, and have bug fixes and new features that you can take advantage of. As one example, the WebKit version of Safari currently passes the Acid3 browser test with a perfect score, while the released version of Safari scores a 75 out of 100.

One minor issue with using WebKit, however, is that it sets the default 'new window' page to this page, which thanks you for helping test WebKit, and lets you know there's a new nightly build available. This constant reminder helps insure that the WebKit team doesn't get bug reports against older nightly builds, but it gets annoying relatively quickly. (As a side hint, you can use NightShift to automatically download and install new nightly builds; highly recommended.)

If you'd like your Safari home page back while using WebKit, you'll need to use a simple Terminal command, which is documented on this page on the WebKit site (quit WebKit first):

defaults write org.webkit.nightly.WebKit StartPageDisabled -bool YES
Relaunch WebKit, and it will now respect your home page setting, as set in the General tab of WebKit's Preferences panel.

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