Customize Safari’s Toolbar

Updated April 5th, 2016.

Safari’s a nice browser but you can make it nicer by customizing the toolbar. What you learn in this blog post will help you in other programs (Mail, the Finder, Pages, Keynote, and many more) so you’re getting a lot for your money here.

This is Safari’s toolbar, right out of the box. (This is Safari 4 but it’s similar in version 3.) Click the toolbar below for a larger version.

Pretty basic. You get “back,” “forward,” and “Add to Bookmarks.” Ho hum.

But… if you choose “Customize Toolbar…” from Safari’s View menu, you get this (click the picture for a larger version):

Wowee, choices galore! Do what they tell you: drag buttons up and into the toolbar. If you change your mind, drag them off the toolbar. Arrange them any which way you like. It’s your toolbar: do what you want to it.

Here’s what I did to mine. Check out these buttons, working from left to right (and click the picture for a larger version):

Back one page
Forward one page

Smaller text and pictures (Safari 4– in version 3, it’s just smaller text)
Larger text and pictures (see above)

Auto-fill (fills in web page forms with the information on your card in your Address Book)

1Password (not free, but really cool. Read about it further down in the blog)

Print

Home (takes you back to the page Safari starts with)

Top Sites (drag the little picture to the left of “http”– in this case, the Apple logo– to the Top Sites icon to add it to Top Sites, and click on Top Sites to see what your Top Sites are.

Add to Bookmarks

Customizing the toolbar is fun, and you can’t break it. If you really mess up and want to start over just drag the standard set back up to the toolbar.

Apple’s Mail program (and Keynote, and the Finder, and Pages, etc.) work the same way. You know everything you need now to customize toolbars there too. Try it and let me know how it goes.

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