How to stop Safari reopen on last page

Thanks man... it works..... I used this command on terminal... it worked....

Is there a way to clear this on an ipad?

this worked for me without doing anything else. Thanks a lot it was aggravating. KISS not literally

This thread is a top hit for searches such as "stop safari from opening old pages" on DuckDuckGo and"how to stop safari reopening in last page" in Bing. I noticed the solution to my problem was not listed here, so I am adding this reply.

My problem: I was searching for a Sega Saturn ROM for OpenEmu. I was unaware how shady such web sites catering to this market segment are. One site completely took over Safari. I could not adjust Safari preferences. I could not move off the adware scam tabs. I could not close the popup dialogs. I could not switch to a new window. Every time I opened Safari, it reopened the adware infected site.

The way to open Safari without opening your previous web pages is to hold the shift key while clicking the Safari icon. After that, I regained control of Safari. It started at my Top Sites pages. I could adjust Safari preferences and clear my history of the unwanted scam web sites.

Thank you, same thing happened to me and I just needed to stop it from opening the last group of pages once. This is exactly what I was looking for.

TThis key combination saved me. I was getting horrible pop ups from "MAC Support Hotline 888-546-2813" which completely disabled Safari. (I am on El Capitan.). I couldn't even get to Safari preferences to change the behavior on Safari start up.

Thanks!

There is a much simpler way to do this without using Terminal. Open 'System Preferences'---'General', and turn on 'Close windows when quitting an application'. When you restart Safari, it will now open to whatever start page you chose in Safari's Preferences (Safari--Preferences---General).