Observation Point

Hidden Preferences in Safari 4 Public Beta

After discovering that you can disable the “Tabs on Top” feature in the Safari 4 Public Beta by setting a hidden preference, I decided to dig in and document the rest of the (somewhat) less interesting preferences that I found in the process.

Setting Preferences

You can set the preferences described in this article by opening the Terminal application (in /Applications/Utilities) and typing:

defaults write com.apple.Safari *[PreferenceKey]* -bool NO

… where [PreferenceKey] is the name of the key described here. Also, please note that you should only set these preferences while Safari is closed, otherwise they will not be saved when you relaunch Safari (not to mention these preferences won’t take effect until Safari is relaunched).

To restore Safari to its default setting for any one of the preference keys described here, simply delete the preference by typing:

defaults delete com.apple.Safari <strong>[PreferenceKey]</strong>

The reason I recommend deleting the key over simply setting it to YES is so you have a clean preferences file if Apple decides to change any of these settings in the future. Given that the keys are all prefixed with DebugSafari4, I am making an assumption that they are not set in stone and will likely disappear before the final release.

Reverting “Tabs on Top” Behavior

Setting the DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop property to false will revert to the way tabs were handled in Safari 3.x. This preference was also covered here, earlier.

To set this property, open Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

Reverting the Redesigned Toolbar

Safari 4 introduces a newly redesigned toolbar that consolidates the Bookmark Site and Reload buttons into a unified toolbar.

In addition, this new toolbar changes the page loading indicator from a blue bar that gradually fills the address bar until the page is loaded to a spinner. It is a little difficult to see when Safari is loading a page if you are used to the blue bar. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a method to restore this functionality using the new unified toolbar.
However, you can revert to the old toolbar by opening Terminal and typing the following:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool NO

Setting this preference alone will still not revert to the blue bar loading indicator, but instead this pie-like indicator that replaces the icon of the site:

In order to fully restore the blue bar loading indicator, open Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool NO

This will give you the blue bar loading indicator we’ve all come to love:

After doing this, you may notice that you have no longer have a Refresh button in your toolbar. No worries—just right click on the toolbar and select “Customize Toolbar…” and re-add the drag the “Stop/Reload” button (and “Add Bookmark” button, if you miss it) onto your toolbar.

Disabling the Smart Address Field

This is one of my favorite new features of Safari 4, so not sure why anyone would want to disable this. For those interested, open the usual and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList -bool NO

Disabling Google Suggest in the Smart Search Field

Safari will now automatically suggest search terms when typing in the Search box next to the Address Bar. If this isn’t something you’re keen on, fire up Terminal and type:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -bool NO

Disabling CoverFlow in Bookmarks

If you happen to find CoverFlow in the Bookmarks view frivolous and needless bloat, you’re free to turn it right off:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool NO

For me? I think I’ll keep it around for a bit. The fact that it doesn’t show me previews for SSL-protected sites is a tiny bit annoying, but I can absolutely understand why this is the case.

Disabling Top Sites

Safari has a new feature called Top Sites that displays your most frequent and favorite sites in a fashion not unlike the Apple TV loading video. If this is more than a bother and don’t care to just disable it as your start page as you can do from Preferences, you may completely disable the functionality by typing the following:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool NO

Disabling Snapshot Dimming in Top Sites

When you launch a site from the Top Sites view, Safari will dim the snapshot of that site while it fetches the up-to-date live version of the site. This is probably the least significant of all the hidden preferences I’ve come across, but alas… type the following to disable it:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapshot -bool NO

Obviously, this won’t have any effect if you’ve already disabled the Top Sites functionality above.