How do I disable bookmark previews in the sidebar in Safari for MacOS?

After the last MacOS Sequoia update (15.6.1 -> 15.7) Safari was upgraded to 26.0 and I now how have a short preview for each site for each bookmark in the sidebar. This makes bookmarks in the sidebar borderline unusable as I have a LOT of bookmarks and scrolling them / picking a specific one out of the list is much more difficult now and loading the previews does horrible, horrible things to performance.

How can I switch this off and just go back to one-line bookmarks in the sidebar? This "upgrade" is making Safari borderline unusable for me.

Earlier Mac models

Posted on Sep 17, 2025 6:18 PM

Top-ranking reply

macquarius

Level 1

41 points

Posted on Sep 23, 2025 11:35 AM

To get the "old" view back of your bookmarks click on the three dots and check "Compact and uncheck "Show Folders on Top".

However, unfortunately, when saving new bookmarks a category "Recently Saved" with big a** icons appears above the bookmarks which in no way can be hidden (not yet anyway).

Let's pray that Apple fix this in macOS 26.0.1

[Edited by Moderator]

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21 replies

Oct 7, 2025 10:34 AM in response to nancy_411

I really, really do not like all that showing in my bookmarks (blech!), they're bookmarks, not a place to read things, but a place to find things quickly.

[Edited by Moderator]

Oct 7, 2025 10:43 AM in response to edenorchestra

What did I say that I deserved an edit? Use of the word dumb and Apple in the same sentence . . really, for someone that has spent at least $40K over the past 12 years on Apple products . .

Nov 10, 2025 7:42 AM in response to nancy_411

I hope Apple will change this so you can hide all the extra text and just get the list. I totally agree with you, the bookmarks are completely unusable if you have more than 10 or so bookmarks.

johric

Level 1

50 points

Nov 13, 2025 9:53 AM in response to Why-change-it

Can you step back with Time Machine to the settings before the update?

Time Machine won't show the old Safari version now, so no.

Nov 13, 2025 10:48 AM in response to johric

Thanks johric, no point in wasting even more time then! Where they get the ideas for these 'improvements'? It's probably a penalty for not upgrading to the latest os.

Dec 2, 2025 9:54 AM in response to Erik_C

I really dislike the preview with the description and don't have the 3-dot option on Safari 26.1. Please fix this.

How do I disable bookmark previews in the sidebar in Safari for MacOS?