A collection of additional Safari 4 Beta hidden settings
Feb 25, '09 07:30:04AM
Contributed by: robg
In addition to restoring in-window tabs, it turns out that there are a number of other hidden preferences available in the Safari 4 Beta. In the interest of efficiency, I've chosen to list all of them that I know about (as of today, at least) in this one hint. As more are uncovered in the future, I'll run those as standalone hints. But for now, here's a list of seven (in addition to the one to move the tab bar) more tweaks you can apply to Safari 4 Beta.
Each of these are boolean variables, meaning they take a TRUE or FALSE argument. They also all default to TRUE, so to enable each one, you need to set its value to FALSE. To do that, use this command template in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.safari key_name -bool FALSE
Replace key_name with the variables as shown below. To disable any one of the hacks, you can either reverse the command by replacing FALSE with TRUE, or you can delete the key entirely:
defaults delete com.apple.safari key_name
When you change any of these values, make sure Safari is not running at the time. Read on for a list of each variable and a brief description of its function.
Here's what I've discovered so far:
- DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -- Disable the drop-down menu in the search box that shows Google search suggestions.
- DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -- This one only seems to work if you also set the following variable as well. When both are set, this one gives you the old-style blue "site loading" progress indicator in the URL bar.
- DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -- I'm not sure exactly what this one does on its own; I know it needs to be set in order to see the old-style progress bar, though.
- DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -- Disables Cover Flow view when using the Bookmarks » Show All Bookmarks page.
- DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapshot -- When set, the page isn't dimmed when zooming to a given site from the Top Sites page.
- DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -- Completely disables the Top Sites feature, removing its icon from the toolbar and preventing the Top Sites page from loading.
- DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList -- Eliminates the three-section drop-down menu that appears when entering a URL. Instead, behavior reverts to that of Safari 3, where you'll see previously-entered URLs as you type.
As another hint submitter pointed out (in a hint submission which was a duplicate of the 'move tab bar' hint), it's quite possible all of these settings may disappear when Safari 4 goes final, given that their names begin with DebugSafari4.... I'm hoping that proves not to be the case, as at least a few of them are quite useful -- I, for one, despise the new 'tabs on top' feature, for instance.
If you discover additional hidden settings for Safari 4 Beta, please submit them as separate hints, don't list them in the comments. (Well, feel free to list them as comments if you want, but I'd really like to be able to run them as hints, too, so they get more visibility.)
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090225065338303