Can no longer keep favourites side bar expanded in Safari 15

Apple Support just figured this out for me. In Preferences -> General, "Safari opens with:" was set to "A New Window". We changed it to "All windows from last session". Now if I close Safari and re-open it, the sidebar comes back just the way I left it. I don't know if it matters but "New windows open with:" is set to "Same Page".

I don't think it's a new feature, because if you close Safari by cmd Q and reopen Safari, the bookmark list ist expanded. Only when closing Safari by the red dot the list is collapsed the next time you open Safari

I've been having the same issue! I've found the best way to work around this is by creating a keyboard shortcut for Safari which opens the bookmarks tab directly.

To do this you go to System Preferences>Keyboard>App Shortcuts>"+">type "Show Bookmarks" in the Menu Title field, and your shortcut in the Keyboard Shortcut field.

Link below of the apple support page and a helpful youtube video on keyboard shortcuts:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mchlp2271/mac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_47kJvS8nhk

I hope this helps until Apple hopefully resolves this issue!

Hi, the STP app is not like a 3rd party app that has the potential negatives you fear. In fact the STP upon launch acts just like the Safari app including automatically having your bookmarks etc there (no importing etc). For some reason the STP on Big Sur and now Monterey still has the function we are griping about (legitimately) but now missing from the new Safari. If you find that any beta feature built into STP makes a website you visit not perform as you want/expect, use another browser but there is nothing about the STP app that alters your system. You don't have to "go back" in time to remove STP like you would a system upgrade you didn't like. Just delete the app. Hope this helps you.

Using Safari Technology Preview from the app store continues to work like we want (MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) running Monterey 12.0.1)

I have Big Sur 11.6 on my iMac. My wife has Catalina 10.15.7 on her's. They do behave differently. Doing the following on both:

Set Preferences -> General:

Safari opens with: All windows from last session

New windows open with: Same Page

New tabs open with: Same Page

Select Bookmarks in the Sidebar

Close Safari

Open it

They both come back displaying the last page. Bookmarks are selected on Big Sur. Bookmarks are collapsed on Catalina.

When I open a New Window, they both come back showing the last page but with the sidebar collapsed.

As I noted earlier, I don't see any way to hide/show the sidebar from the menu bar icon without collapsing it.

Apple does make changes from time to time I wish they hadn't. But they aren't usually senseless like this. It's surely not working the way the people who design user interfaces intended. If not, it's reasonable to hope there'll be a 15.1 update shortly to fix it.

The issue remains in Monterey. But regardless of your OSX the problem does not occur in Safari Technology Preview app so just use that. But this problem made me go back to Firefox which has key features like containers etc. and is superior.

Yeah. Just to be exact- we have a 2014 27"iMac (late 2014) with the "base" processor, i.e. Intel 4690. It is running Big Sur 11.6 and Safari 14.1.2 (16611.3.10.1.6) It behaves in the "good old way," that is, when you open bookmarks in the sidebar, then close Safari, then open Safari again, the bookmarks are displayed as opened, that is, you don't have to *reopen* bookmarks each time you open Safari.

We also have a 2017 27"iMac with the "middle speed" processor, i.e. Intel 7600. It is running Big Sur and Safari 15.0 (16612.1.29.41.4 16612) On this machine, I have the same problem you do, i.e. each time I open Safari I have to "show" the bookmarks sidebar, either by "clicking" on "bookmarks" or by shift-command-1

When I have some time to waste, I will create a bootable image, then "update" to Safari 15.0 on this 2014 machine and see if the problem appears. If it does, I will then restore from the bootable image. This is the only way I know to "downgrade" to Safari 14. My *guess* is that Safari 15 on this machine will run just fine, with the proper bookmarks presentation.

From the various comments from people on this forum, it *appears* that there are people out there running Safari 15.0 on Big Sur 11.6 who do *not* experience this problem. If that is the case, then different hardware sets react to Safari 15.0 on Big Sur in different ways. It is also possible that people think they are on Safari 15 when they are not. This is unlikely, I guess.

Right now, my bet is on hardware-dependent code in Safari 15.0

When I run my experiment, I'll let you know.

Hi, you are correct. Using STP will help only in that each time you open STP, you will have to click twice to get your sidebar bookmarks displayed. Once having done that, it holds until you exit STP. If you close it down and reopen, you will have to do the steps again. But at least we do the steps only once per open STP session. Not perfect, but better than having the bookmarks collapse every time during a session...(PS I'm totally enjoying Firefox, it's containers, it's heightened privacy etc. Probably won't go back to Safari even if they correct this issue)

Hi;

I tried this and my result was the same as what you experienced. Force quitting retains the Bookmarks. A temporary work around. Thanks for taking this up with Apple support.

The best solution I've found is to learn the keyboard shortcuts to open bookmarks. The shortcut is: Command-control-1 all at once. To find more look up safari keyboard shortcuts.

Hey I agree with you. I’m just using cmd-ctrl-1 until they fix this bug.

That's strange, iMac 27”- late 2012 (macOS Catalina) 

Can you set up this:

See this Apple article:

Customize the start page in Safari on Mac

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/safari/ibrw01514823/mac