Updated November 1st, 2022.

Safari on the Mac is a great web browser. Make it even more great by mastering these five essential shortcuts.

⌘-L

Quickest way to the Smart Search* box? It’s ⌘-L. No matter where the cursor is, ⌘-L moves the cursor to the Smart Search box and selects everything in it. Perfect for copying the URL, also perfect for going somewhere else (because, with the URL selected, the next thing you type replaces the selected text).

This shortcut goes first because it’s my favorite.

(* The Smart Search box is the official name for the address/URL box at the top of the Safari window.)

⌘-I

Want to email someone a link to a web page? You can use the Share button in Safari’s toolbar, of course. But it’s faster to type ⌘-I (the shortcut for File/Share/Email This Page).

(The Share button– in the Toolbar– is more flexible as you can do many more things, but if you’re going to send the link by email, use ⌘-I.)

⌘-F

Sometimes you’re on the right page, but finding what you’re looking for is hard. This is especially true when it’s a long page. So just type ⌘-F and search the page you’re on! Easy and handy and fast. Way better than scanning the page with your eyes.

You can hit Return to find subsequent occurrence of the text you’re looking for.

⌘-[

You’d think that ⌘-left arrow would go back one page, and that seems to work, but the official shortcut is ⌘-[.

Of course, ⌘-] goes forward one page.

spacebar

Scrolling through a web page is easily done using the spacebar. Each tap scrolls the content down one “screen-full” so you never scroll too far. (Shift-spacebar scrolls back up, also one screen-full.) If your keyboard has Page Down and Page Up buttons those will work too, but the spacebar is so nice and big, it’s an easier target.

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