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Level 1

132 points

Safari 5: How do I disable address auto completion?

I am very irritated with address autocompletion in Safari. How do I turn this annoyance off? It's preventing me from going to some sites.

For instance, if I want to go to one site, and its address is similar to one of the sites in my bookmarks list, Safari will insist on taking me to the address of that bookmark, and will not yield to my demands. (An example would be if I have a particular RSS feed, such as MacWorld, in my bookmarks. Now I try to type in macworld.com so I can actually go to the real website, but Safari thinks I want to go to the RSS feed and stubbornly fills out the rest of it. I try to delete that from my toolbar address field, but Safari fills it right back in again!) How can I stop it from doing this?

(Note that I already have AutoFill completely disabled. All of its check boxes are deselected.)

iMac Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Jun 10, 2010 2:19 PM

43 replies

gilken

Level 1

6 points

Jul 6, 2010 11:59 AM in response to Babaganoosh

The best way to disable drop down menus and auto-completion I have found is to start a URL with 2 (two) spaces. You still get a silly drop down menu but it only contains the entry 'Search for " " in History and mirrors the URL being typed.

In Safari 4 and earlier only one space was required and there was no drop down menu. Bliss!

Jul 8, 2010 8:55 PM in response to Babaganoosh

This is not a total solution, but it makes it more liveable. After typing in a partial URL like "apple," just hit the delete button and it will remove everything that Safari is suggesting should come after that. (The suggested additional text is already automatically selected.) You can then hit Return, and you'll go right to www.apple.com.

atomicon

Level 1

0 points

Jul 12, 2010 11:59 AM in response to Babaganoosh

I just submitted a request to the Safari feedback page to have this stupid behavior changed.

I'm on the verge of changing browsers because of it. As I mentioned in my Safari feedback, having the address bar auto complete using the page title instead of the web address is like going to the library and searching for a book using the chapter names instead of the book's title!

Jul 20, 2010 4:43 PM in response to atomicon

I just filled out my complaint (err, feedback) on this "feature" - effectively disabling my ability to go to certain sites because of the "stuff" in the <title> tags.

I've switched back to Chrome, for now, until Safari is fixed. Or at least neutered of this bug with an option to disable this bug.

J

Gerardj

Level 3

955 points

Jul 23, 2010 9:28 AM in response to Babaganoosh

A full month an no-one on the 'net has found a way to disable this. Wow.
I REALLY hate the auto-complete based to history title.

Jul 23, 2010 9:43 AM in response to Gerardj

There isn't an option to turn it off by changing a preference flag or similar (via the command line), as has been done with previous versions of Safari - so it's unlikely someone is going to find "a way to disable this".

I wrote myself a Safari extension to work around this (it prevents the titles of pages you visit being indexable beyond one character - you have to clear your existing history, then any new pages that are added to your history will still be indexed by URL, but not by title. This doesn't apply to your Safari bookmarks).

Jul 26, 2010 1:08 AM in response to notmyphorte

"I wrote myself a Safari extension to work around this (it prevents the titles of pages you visit being indexable beyond one character - you have to clear your existing history, then any new pages that are added to your history will still be indexed by URL, but not by title."

that sounds (nearly) perfect! care to share?

btw, i'll just add my voice to the chorus who think that this "feature" is completely stupid. i filled out the feedback form linked upthread, but i don't imagine anything will happen.

Jul 26, 2010 5:31 AM in response to spider from mars

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2456976#11797979

nooma

Level 1

0 points

Jul 27, 2010 9:38 AM in response to Babaganoosh

Apple, just fix this, this is the most stupid step backwards in user interface I have ever seen. Who the **** types the name of a page into a URL address bar?

Jul 28, 2010 4:37 PM in response to Babaganoosh

I was hoping 5.0.1 would fix this. Sticking with reverted 4.0.5 for now.

enaz81

Level 1

0 points

Aug 23, 2010 4:05 PM in response to bowler357

DOWNLOAD SECRETS: http://secrets.blacktree.com/ and then uncheck use new URL completion list. BOOM. no more annoying address bar.

Fenalaar

Level 1

0 points

Aug 23, 2010 4:49 PM in response to enaz81

I can confirm - Secrets works to fix this crap! Hooray!

Johan-Kr

Fenalaar

Level 1

0 points

Aug 23, 2010 10:16 PM in response to Fenalaar

Too quick off the mark, looks like... It worked for a while,

pieRr0Ur

Level 1

34 points

Aug 26, 2010 11:28 PM in response to Matt Hardy

It's also what other web browsers with auto address completion e.g. Opera, are suffering 404 Pages, and Failing Open of pages should be removed from auto-completion.

Larryds

Level 1

0 points

Aug 28, 2010 11:04 AM in response to Babaganoosh

I see that this thread is marked with a solved answer. I don't see a solution in any of the posts. Is there one?

Safari 5: How do I disable address auto completion?