Safari 4 Quick Tip: Enable / Disable new features

Apple’s new Safari 4 browser (currently in beta) scores an impressive 99/100 in the Acid3 Web Standards compatibility test, and includes several new features that can be enabled / disabled by setting boolean values in a Preference List file to FALSE or TRUE.

Quit Safari 4, create a backup of your ‘~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist‘ file, then open a new Terminal window and enter the relevant command below. Relaunch Safari 4 after changing a setting to load your new preferences.

Don’t display the tab bar on top of the browser window:

defaults write com.apple.safari
  DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool FALSE

Don’t use Google Suggest in the search box in the top right-hand corner of the browser window:

defaults write com.apple.safari
  DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -bool FALSE

Remove the Refresh / Stop icon and Bookmark icon from the new URL bar and use the old-style blue progress bar loading indicator:

defaults write com.apple.safari
  DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign -bool FALSE
 
defaults write com.apple.safari
  DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle -bool FALSE

Disable Cover Flow view in Bookmarks:

defaults write com.apple.safari
  DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView -bool FALSE

Don’t dim the browser window when zooming to a website from Top Sites:

defaults write com.apple.safari
  DebugSafari4TopSitesZoomToPageAnimationDimsSnapshot
  -bool FALSE

Disable the Top Sites feature:

defaults write com.apple.safari
  DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool FALSE

Disable the Top Hit / History listing when entering a URL and display only previously-entered URLs:

defaults write com.apple.safari
  DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList -bool FALSE

Any of the changes above can be reverted by entering the command again with a boolean value of TRUE.

To completely reset any changes you made to the Safari 4 Preference List, copy the backup you made of ‘com.apple.Safari.plist‘ back into ‘~/Library/Preferences/‘, overwriting the existing file.

Safari 4 includes the Developer Tools available in Safari 3 and in Webkit, and these can be enabled by following the instructions detailed here.

Related posts:

1. Mac OS X: Disabling bouncing Dock icons
2. Enabling the Safari and Webkit Debug Menu and Developer Tools
3. Downloading YouTube Videos with Safari
4. Making hidden application icons transparent on Mac OS X
5. Changing the Mac OS X Login Window’s background image