Safari 5: How do I disable address auto completion?

HI,

There's a work around. From the Safari Menu Bar click Safari/Private Browsing.

Read the dialog box...





Carolyn 🙂

I can't say for sure but I would think that if you go to Safari/Preferences/Autofill and uncheck all of the boxes it should accomplish this. If you don't give it a source to autofill from it shouldn't autofill. But I'm just guessing.

I feel your pain, Babaganoosh. It is immensely irritating.

Just now, I typed "Apple" into the address bar and hit Return. In Safari 4, it would have appended the www. and .com to Apple and sent me on my merry way to Apple's home page. In Safari 5, I was whisked off to: http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/

Why? Because the title of the page is "Apple CEO Steve Jobs Live at D8 | D8 Conference | AllThingsD" and when I typed "Apple" into the address bar, it inexplicably determined that I was typing a page title into the address bar instead of a URL, and searched its memory for page titles that begin with "Apple." Who types *page titles* into the address bar?

I don't mind Safari giving me a list of options from history or bookmarks that I could choose from below the address bar, but it is driving me batty that it's forcing those options on me rather than giving me what I'm actually asking for.

Yes! I have no idea whether anyone from Apple reads these discussions, or if these are just a way for users to talk to other users, but please, if anyone from Apple reads this, PLEASE let us disable this feature!! Terribly irritating, and at least in my case, more likely to get in my way than it is to help. I hate this "microsoft style" trend of computers giving us what they think we "really" want instead of giving us exactly what we ask for. I switched back from firefox to safari in part to get rid of this terrible "feature". Like candex says, it's fine to pop down a list of things we might want, but if we don't pick anything from the list, it should behave as expected a la safari 4. If I type Apple, I want www.apple.com - period!

In the meantime the simplest way to stop Safari doing this is to add a space before typing the URL.

I was excited to try this "space first" trick, but it doesn't work.

The problem is that Safari seems to be weighting the TITLEs of pages in your history above the actual URLs in your history when filling in the auto-complete. So, if you've got a page in your history that has a title that begins the same as the URL you are typing, you have to type until it no longer matches (or clumsily attempt to select the 5th hit in a mishmash list of options).

The URL bar should match first on the URL and then attempt to match on title and should NEVER auto-select a title based match without additional confirmation (i.e. tabbed complete).

I experience the same irritation with Safari 5.

A couple of examples:

I key in "apple" into the address bar. With Safari 4 I would wind up at www.apple.com. With Safari 5 I wind up at www.macsales.com

I start to key in "marketwatch". With Safari 4 it would correctly auto-complete and take me to www.marketwatch.com. Now with Safari 5 I wind up at www.foxbusiness.com.

It has always been a huge irritation for me with Explorer for Windows in that keying in something like "amazon" into the address bar would return a page of search engine results for "amazon."

I've always appreciated on the Mac that keying in "amazon" into the address bar actually takes me to ww.amazon.com.

Wow what a concept!

i agree, this is an irritating "feature." let's keep this thread at the top of the discussion forum.

keep replying.

For what conceivable purpose?

You are not getting Apple's attention here. To do that use the Bug Report button to send Apple product feedback and feature requests.

I've been trying to get around this with a Safari extension: http://bit.ly/aKgVlh

It's a horrible hack - it uses JavaScript to inject an odd UTF-8 character before each character in the page title. This means that after the second character is typed into the address bar page titles from the history will not be suggested (but URLs from the history will still be).

*Note that you must clear your existing history first (else these will still be suggested).*

This does not apply to other items (e.g. existing bookmarks).

It has a few quirks: short tab names are shifted to the left and in a couple of minor situations gaps appear between the title characters - when inspecting element or for the suggestions that appear based on URL in the address bar.

This is JavaScript based, so it may have issues with some sites that manipulate the page title.

Boy, if someone tried to invent annoyance, this would be it.

Here's the best place to make your voices heard:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

I suggested that giving users OPTIONS (a means of enabling and disabling at will) is the best way to go; not deciding for us.

The problem is that many people touch type and may not even notice this irritating feature until they get some obscure web page that was not what they typed. This should NOT be a default feature. I mindlessly updated to Safari 5 and it has been a major mistake. I couldn't get youtube to work. This is NOT what I expect of an Apple product.

When I typed 'fa' in safari 4 it'd auto-complete facebook.com
Which was useful.

Now in safari 5, I get taken to... wait for it...

'Failed to open page'

Title versus URL is now making me type more, not less, argh 🙂
But have to laugh, cause I should not go to facebook anyway...

Message was edited by: Matt Hardy

(Bump to keep this topic fresh)

If you haven't already, please consider sending a complaint about this issue to Apple:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html