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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

Sep 3, 2010 7:16 AM in response to Larryds

Try Here,

http://www.shauninman.com/archive/2010/08/25/smrt

dTheory

Level 1

4 points

Sep 8, 2010 8:46 AM in response to Zevie Tannenbaum

Keeping the thread open... since the Safari extensions don't work with ones existing bookmarks another solution is needed...

Sep 8, 2010 6:49 PM in response to Babaganoosh

This is severely annoying. Apple, patch this quick! I will be using Chrome until it is fixed.

Sep 13, 2010 9:26 AM in response to c.j.vincent

BUMP!!! Cant let this go just yet - how the **** do you stop this problem!?

enaz81

Level 1

0 points

Sep 14, 2010 5:10 PM in response to Babaganoosh

ok. i thought i had the answer before but this seems to be working. follow the instructions on this website. http://www.shauninman.com/archive/2010/08/25/smrt

Sep 16, 2010 8:05 PM in response to enaz81

You know what? I appreciate the effort, but I don't want to download a work-around from a complete stranger.

Safari worked just great until I upgraded. Now it gets in the way. I don't like Firefox, because the autocomplete in the address bar isn't as smooth as the OLD Safari, but now I'm seriously considering switching my default browser.

Like a lot of the people who commented here, I used the autocomplete feature all the time. Most of the time, I could get to the correct website after two or three keystrokes. Now everything takes twice as long.

This "feature" is illogical and poorly designed. It gets in the way, and it can't be disabled. Thanks, Safari, for making your browser less usable.

nooma

Level 1

0 points

Sep 23, 2010 12:24 PM in response to Brigid Alverson

I am absolutely infuriated by this. I have never cussed at my computer so much.

Nobleach

Level 1

0 points

Sep 25, 2012 8:17 PM in response to Babaganoosh

What is so unacceptable about this is that my brand new iPad is now suggesting urls that I visited on my MacBook last year. Somehow apple saw fit to store these in the cloud, and then push them down to my new device. Thank you apple. Now I can't visit reddit.com without having nsfw reddit pushed in my face. And it looks like I'll have a reminder forever of the one freakin time I clicked a nsfw ink.

Dec 4, 2012 8:45 AM in response to Nobleach

When is everyone going to realize that apple does not care about your opinions or problems? All they care about is you buying their product. Once you buy the product you are on your own.

Sad to say but it is true, Apple has the worst customer service I have ever delt with.

kmva

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2013 9:39 AM in response to Babaganoosh

Note to all - this problem has been SOLVED in Safari 7 (and possibly Safari 6).

In Safari 7: Go to the Privacy tab of Safari Preferences. At the bottom, where you see "Smart Search Field", select "Prevent search engine from providing suggestions", which will limit the address/search bar's suggestions to sites in your history and bookmarks. If THAT annoys you, clear your history and remove/rename any problematic bookmarks.

Cheers.

Dec 2, 2013 4:15 AM in response to kmva

which will limit the address/search bar's suggestions to sites in your history and bookmarks. If THAT annoys you, clear your history and remove/rename any problematic bookmarks.

Sorry, but IMO it is really no solution at all if users will have to remove all their bookmarks to not get those suggestions. Another thing that is really annoying and related is that these auto-suggested URLs are immediately requested in the background by Safari! This might be intended as a kind of prefetch feature!

But it currently seems that these prefetch requests don't even have special HTTP header so that website owners have no chance to detect those as prefetch requests.

Conclusion: This feature is not just annoying to the user but also to website owners. Please Apple don't enable it by default.

crew3lt

Level 1

0 points

Feb 17, 2014 6:00 AM in response to Babaganoosh

I think I might have figured this out. Check to see if any of the websites or words you type into the URL bar are saved in your bookmarks or reading List. I just did this and sure enough, they are listed in the bookmarks. Not sure how to disable that feature, other than to delete your bookmarks.

Mar 18, 2015 9:18 AM in response to Klaus1

Thank you Klaus for that trick! Solved a big problem! It was pulling up my history and bookmarks and no matter what was checked in the preferences, it wouldn't stop. Now by hitting the space bar twice it doesn't do that. Thank you thank you thank you! I've spent too much time already on this and now I can move on with the day. Solved.

Safari 5: How do I disable address auto completion?