Filed under: Software, How-tos, Internet Tools, TUAW Tips
TUAW Tip: Safari's reset button
Brandon sent us a great tip that I should have known was in Safari, but that I hadn't found yet. For you paranoids out there, the Safari 3 beta offers an easy way to clean up every single thing you've ever done, including the history, passwords, cookies, and even favicons and Autofill text. Under the Edit menu, there's a "Reset Safari" option which reveals a checklist that lets you hit the reset button on your browser. Firefox users like myself will notice that this was "gently lifted" from the Clear Private Data function under FF's Tools menu.And it's not just for paranoid browsers out there-- the blogging engine here at TUAW, Blogsmith, is a great program but sometimes hiccups when the cache gets overwritten or pushed out of sync. When it does, the Reset options let me flush the cache in just a few clicks without losing any of my browser windows. If you ever run across a browser-based application that's not doing what you want, this is definitely an alternative to try before actually restarting the browser.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sevenfive said 9:05AM on 7-25-2007
this has long been a feature of safari prior to 3 and possibly before FF built it in.
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Ben said 9:17AM on 7-25-2007
Ive also found a slight issue with this in the current version of Safari.
If you are logged into your Google Account (and your home page is iGoogle) and then click Reset.. and then you Quit Safari.. the next time you load Safari you will find youself logged back into Google! Not sure how this is the case, but it is true for my google account on my macbook pro and iMac G5.. This is the only site i can vouch that this happens on
What you have to do is, reset Safariand then refresh the page, then quit Safari.. This then seems to clear your cache!
Anyone else get this issue?
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jp said 9:30AM on 7-25-2007
it's under the Safari Menu...
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monkeybrain said 10:05AM on 7-25-2007
This has almost certainly been there since Safari v.1.0. The only difference is they've souped it up by adding more options. More research first please.
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Jeff said 10:40AM on 7-25-2007
Yeah, "reset safari" has been there forever. Check out one of TUAW's own post, http://www.tuaw.com/2005/05/02/porn-mode/ . Though about the "Private Browsing" option in the safari menu, it shows "Reset safari." And that was May 2005.
I really don't like the clunkiness of the Safari 3 dialogue box for "reset safari."
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Rafe H. said 10:42AM on 7-25-2007
Can someone confirm if Safari 2 or 3 in OS X now brings up a selection list as the post implies, or does it silently just wipe out your private data as it has before? I'm scared to try, because the last time I did it cleaned out all my Keychain password related to websites, which surprised and angered me (I entered them manually into Keyhain, they were not "owned" by Safari).
Also, as I'm sure most OS X users are aware, one can empty the cache easily enough without choosing the Reset Safari option, just browse the menus a bit!
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buzweaver said 12:10PM on 7-25-2007
Safri still holds no particular interest to me. What respectable browser out there leaves out a critical element of the browser, that being the ability to sort your favorites ascending/descending? Unless I use either IE 7 or FF (to sort) I have no way of organizing my 1.5m worth of bookmarks in Safri.
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Roy Whelden said 3:32PM on 7-25-2007
As I recall, reset under earlier versions of Safari (that is, before 3.0) didn't have the fine control that reset under Safari 3.0 allows.
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schwa said 3:42PM on 7-25-2007
Actually, most Firefox users will be correctly aware that this has been present in Safari since Panther, and any "gentle lifting" happened the other way around.
buzweaver - You have a very strange definition of "critical".
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