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Safari history limited to 100000 items

Why is Safari history limited to 100000 items although set to be removed manually? Is it a bug?

This happens in Safari 6.0.1 (8536.26.14) and OS X 10.8.2 but also happened in 10.7 — but it didn’t AFAIR prior to 10.5.

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Oct 11, 2012 9:45 AM

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15 replies

Oct 11, 2012 12:02 PM in response to Klaus1

I read about this nowhere. I just noticed web history shrinking and observed that if I opened History.plist in Xcode when Safari was not running I had 100000 items, but this incremented if I opened this file when the browser was running by the number of sites visited in that session, dropping to 100000 after quitting Safari.

Oct 11, 2012 2:48 PM in response to iamsudo

I have done a bit of digging and contributor LeonieDF has come up with this:


How about this:

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/09/04/terminal-tips-change-safaris-history-limit/


Limit to number of items:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit 2000

Limit to number of days:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit 30

It has been tested and does not balk at 200,000.


So you could try setting it at 1,000,000! Post back in a few years to tell us if it worked! 🙂

Oct 12, 2012 7:28 AM in response to Klaus1

Klaus1, these were my settings prior to your last post


defaults read com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryItemLimit

99999999


defaults read com.apple.Safari HistoryAgeInDaysLimit

365000


defaults read com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit

2012-10-12 15:17:45.530 defaults[97624:707]

The domain/default pair of (/Users/me/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari, WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit) does not exist


The HistoryAgeInDaysLimit key comes AFAIR from http://secrets.blacktree.com/edit?id=4964


Although I added the following key as per your post and linked article, Safari keeps its limit to 100000 items


defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit 365000

defaults read com.apple.Safari WebKitHistoryAgeInDaysLimit

365000


Now, I have two questions

1. How can I know if Safari’s actually processing the value of the key?

2. Which values did contributor LeonieDF set for both keys?

Safari history limited to 100000 items

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