10.6: Run Safari 4 Beta in Snow Leopard

Oct 14, '09 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: Ben Rockhold

I, like many others, really liked the tabs-on-top look the Safari 4 Beta had, and felt cheated when it was removed from the final version. It's not really devastating to be missing this, but as a laptop user, I want to have every centimeter of screen for something meaningful.

I forgot to back up the Beta application, but I did keep the installer. Using Pacifist, I unpacked the application, and tried to run it. However, at least as of 10.6, the Safari 4 beta won't launch.

Luckily, all you need to do is replace the Beta's info.plist and version.plist files with those from Safari 4 Final. These are found in the application bundle (Control-click and pick Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu). You might also want to replace useragents.plist from within Resources. For safety, back up your preferences before you run Safari 4 Beta.

I have not found any issues running this, and the only minor oddity was an initial lack of a URL entry box. I customized the toolbar and dragged it back on, and that worked fine. The best part? The Beta will use the most recently installed WebKit, and thus gets much of the same speed boost as the final version. I hope this helps someone; I know I'm happy.

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