The Favorites Bar is that thin strip at the top of your browser with links to the sites you use most often.
Safari, Firefox and Chrome all have one.
Chrome calls it the Bookmarks Bar, in Firefox it’s the Bookmarks Toolbar… but they all do the same thing.
We’re going to look at the Favorites Bar in Safari.
I Don’t See It
If you don’t see it… don’t panic. Go to the View Menu and choose Show Favorites Bar.
There’s a hidden (pardon the pun) lesson here. In any Application, if you’re missing something… look in the View menu first and you’ll probably find that it’s hidden. Check out this post for further help – When Things Disappear… Check The View Menu
Adding, Deleting And Moving Favorites
If you’re on a website and you’d like to add it to the Favorites Bar, you’ve got 2 options:
- Drag a site address out of the Address Bar, a green + symbol to appear, then drop it onto the Favorites Bar.
- Go to the Bookmarks Menu, choose Add Bookmark and use the drop-down menu to choose Favorites.
To delete a site from the Favorites Bar, drag it off, and it will disappear in a puff of smoke.
Move Favorites left or right by dragging them to a new location on the Favorites Bar.
A Small Tip
When you add a bookmark, the default name used is the Page Name.
Page Names are created by web designers to describe content and use as many search keywords as possible to attract the maximum number of visitors.
So… you end up with a bookmark name that’s incredibly long.
If you bookmark the movie site, Dark Horizons, your bookmark will look like this – Movie Trailers, TV Guide, Movie Reviews, Features, Entertainment News | Dark Horizons
Space is at a premium on the favorites bar. If you use default bookmark names, you’ll fit about 5 links up there.
You need to edit the name, to use as few characters as possible, but remain recognizable.
Maybe you call it Dark Horizons or just DH. Congratulations, you’ve gone from 85 characters to 2.
Folders On The Favorites Bar
You can get even more bookmarks on the Favorites Bar if you use folders.
Folders can hold any bookmarks you want, but it helps if you group bookmarks by subject, e.g: Sports, Movies, News, etc. There are no rules… so knock yourself out.
To create a folder:
- Click Bookmarks in the Menu Bar. Choose Add Bookmarks Folder.
- A sidebar slides in from the left with your new folder at the bottom ready to be named.
- Name the folder
- You may have noticed that this new folder is at the bottom of your Bookmarks. To get it onto the Favorites Bar, click, hold and drag it onto the Favorites Bar.
- Finally, close the sidebar. Click the View Menu and select Hide Sidebar or hit the Show/Hide Sidebar button on the Toolbar.
Add bookmarks to a folder in one of two ways:
- Drag a site address out of the Address Bar, wait for a green + symbol to appear, then drop it into a folder.
- Go to the Bookmarks Menu, choose Add Bookmark and use the drop-down menu to choose your folder.
Another Way To Look At Things
Safari 8.0 on the Mac introduced a new favorites interface that mirrors what you see on devices running iOS 7 or later.
You don’t have to use it… but it pretty cool.
The new interface displays favorites as icons, representing either a single favorite or a favorites folder.
If your understand how App icons and Folders are displayed on iOS devices it makes perfect sense.
Icons show a unique graphic or the plain safari compass emblem. It varies from site to site.
There are a 2 ways to access this interface:
- Click on the Safari address/search bar and a dropdown window displays your favorites. Choose one, or ignore and continue typing your search query.
- On the Favorites Toolbar, click the grid icon on the far left-hand side. A translucent window opens showing you favorites. Make sure the star icon on the top-right hand side is selected.
One accessed, you can:
- Drag and Drop icons to move their positions.
- Dragging an icon outside the grid removes it from Favorites.
With the new Favorites view open you can:
- Click on a favorite to be taken to that website.
- Click on a folder to display icons of the favorites stored in that folder.
One thing, I found very useful was of go into Safari>Preferences>General and have New tabs open with: Favorites.
Favorites contain my most visited sites, so it’s a great interface to see the moment I create a new tab.
That’s it.
Have a fun weekend.
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