search syntax for Safari history? how to remove items from specific pages?

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Level 1

26 points

search syntax for Safari history? how to remove items from specific pages?

I'm using Safari 5.0.3 and I prefer keeping the browsing history quite long for accessing contents I had been searching in the net some weeks ago.
However, that way I'm collecting lots of clutter and therefore I'd like to remove selected entries from the history, e. g. from the page where I'm reading daily news etc.

I tried to use the search field (accessible with Cmd-F in the history view) to search for parts of the corresponding web address, e. g. "http://www.heute.de", but I do not only get the history items from that site but many others from google and other pages.

So I'd like to know: is there a search syntax to use the search field, like address=www.heute.de* which enables wild cards, operators like OR/AND etc.?

If not, is there a 3rd party tool which can help or can I use spotlight/the finder to find and remove the unwanted items from the browser history?

MacBook 13" white 2,16 GHz, 3 GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Mar 12, 2011 10:30 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

andyBall_uk

Level 7

20,516 points

Mar 13, 2011 6:14 AM in response to beckmart

Hi beckmart

there might be ready-made apps or add-ons to do that - but this may help...

quit safari, open Home/Library/Safari/History.plist using PrefSetter

enter the url you want removed in the search box, no need for quotes - say www.google.com

expand the 'web history dates' section at left to see individual results, then select the first one & shift-click the last (don't use select all) to highlight/select all the results - then press the delete key to remove them. Then save the file.

Naturally, a backup copy of history.plist would be wise - but the above seems to work very well.

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Answer 2

beckmart Author

Level 1

26 points

Mar 13, 2011 6:45 AM in response to andyBall_uk

thanks andyball_uk for your help!

PrefSetter is new to me - I'll give it a try!

However, is there no way for a "smarter" search directly in Safari?
The many IMHO false results in my search described above are making me a bit nervous, and for sorting my bookmarks I also would like to use the search feature, but it seems I can not rely on it...

e. g. I tried to select all bookmarks from a specific site (e. g. discussions.apple.com) in a subfolder of their bookmarks folder, but with the strange behavior of the find feature this is sometimes not possible...

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Answer 3

andyBall_uk

Level 7

20,516 points

Mar 13, 2011 6:58 AM in response to beckmart

However, is there no way for a "smarter" search directly in Safari?

not that I know of... quotes don't work, and discussions.apple brings up results with either of those words in the content or url. You can eliminate the content hits (from searching history/bookmarks or the address bar) by removing HistoryIndex.sk, but sometimes they're useful.

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