I have noticed in the last week or so that when I type in the just the name of a company or web site into the Safari url line, I am now taken to a search page and not to the company in question. The URL line now requires a .com or whatever to actually go to the site.
What's up with that?
How do I fix this incredibly annoying problem? Current version of Safari.
Thanks.
Of course you need the top level domain such as .com, .org, etc. Otherwise how would your browser and DNS servers know you wanted to navigate to google.com rather than to google.org if you only entered google? Or tools.com rather than tools.org if you only entered tools?
Maybe you are talking about a bookmark you created rather than the URL line in your browser.
I have never needed the .com. I have been typing in only the name of the compnay for years and years and years and it always went to .com automatically. If the .com isn't right, all I have to do is change it whatever it needs to be, but mostly I don't need to change it.
Now it doesn't do that any longer.
Safari has in fact never done that. It auto-completes a URL if that URL is in your bookmarks or history. Otherwise it has no possible way of knowing what the URL is.
Correct, but it's not auto completing any longer. That's what is bothering me. It knows these sites.
Perhaps you turned that safari autofill option off. Safari preferences --> autofill --> other forms. Make sure the checkbox is checked. Click edit. If it isn't in that list I wouldn't expect it to autocomplete since it wouldn't know what to auto complete with.
Auto complete is always on. That's why this is so strange.
Is there anything in that autofill edit list?
All the boxes are checked and have never been unchecked. It fills in all my forms just fine, it just doesn't want to fill in the sites it has been filling in for years.
I asked if there is any data in the Other forms autofill table. Click the Edit button next to Other forms. If it's empty or doesn't contain the url you were expected to be completed then it won't be completed.
Yes, it's a very long list of site addys. Sorry, I forgot to mention that.
Forget all that autofill stuff for the moment and try this experiment.
1. Type in some complete url and go there. The go back to previous page or dismiss the page so the page is no longer there.
2. Quit safari (with that test url page gone so it is not there when you relaunch safari).
3. Relaunch safari and see if it will now autocomplete that same url you used in step 1.
I'm beginning to think that the history and/or bookmarks are the suppliers of autocompletion.
Sorry for the delay.
I did exactly as you asked and it DID auto complete the URL in the address bar. I am not sure what that means, but it worked and seems to be working now for the ones it would not auto complete during the week.
Thank you.
That's weird. I was working on the theory I mentioned above, i.e., autocomplete is coming from history and bookmarks. So the test was to create some history of a visited site. If that worked I would have said that perhaps your other sites were no longer in history or bookmarks. I didn't expect it would "fix" the problem because the old history was still there.
Oh well. Glad it's working for you again.
Starbird is correct. Previous versions of Safari, in fact, have done the "http://www. _____________ .com" for years where one merely types in the word, and Safari would fill in all the rest around it (.com domain only). You could completely reset Safari, and it would do so. This was not exactly "autocomplete," more like "auto try." However, Safari version 6 with the new omnibar longer does that.
I have just looked at the Apple site and cannnot find an update or any information regarding an update or a Safari 6. Can you tell me where you downloaded the upate please? Thanks so much.
URL now requires .com to take me to a site
