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search Safari Reading List
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I have a pretty long Reading List and Spotlight often fails to find things in it. For that reason I came up with this little script which you might find useful.
1. Open up Automator by typing auto in Spotlight.
2. Click on ‘Service’ (the big cog wheel) and then ‘Choose’.
3. Change the Service receives option to “No input” from the dropdown menu.
4. In the small filter bar to the left, type ‘run app’. You should see an action called ‘Run AppleScript’ in the second column. Drag it to the big pane on the right.
5. Select all the purple text inside the window and delete it. You don’t need any of it.
6. Command click on the image below, and copy the code from the pastebin page that opens up in another Safari tab. Paste the code into the Automator pane.
7. Hit ‘Command-S’ and give it a name like ‘Search Safari Reading List’. Click ‘Save’ (note: you do not specify a location for the save as it will automatically be saved in your ~/Library/Services folder).
8. Now click on the main menu for any app and have a look in the Services submenu. You should see your new service there (to add the keyboard shortcut, see Step 10 below).
9. Test it to make sure it works as expected. You should end up with something that looks like this:
10. If you want to assign a universal shortcut key like mine in the screenshot from Step 8, do so by going to > System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard shortcuts. Look in Services for the name you gave it and add the shortcut by clicking in the empty space to the far right of the name.
A note on usage:
The reading list is really just a list of special bookmarks, with one difference: they contain short snippets or previews from each page. This has an impact on the way my script works in the following way: if the search string is in the preview snippet but isn’t in the URL, you’ll get back the line from the snippet but you won’t get the URL. It might be possible to code round that, but I haven’t had time to figure it out yet. If that’s a feature you want, send me a nag mail and I’ll put it on my list of things to do! 
. Otherwise it appears to function quite well as a workaround for the lack of a proper search facility.
disable captive network assistant
If you use coffee shop wifi services or others that require internet login, you’ve probably noticed in both Lion and Mountain Lion that OS X will produce a pop-up Safari window asking you to login. This can be annoying for several reasons:
1. The window floats on top and gets in the way if you’re trying to do something else
2. The window doesn’t keep cookies or allow plug-ins like 1Password, so you have to enter the login details manually every time
3. Sometimes the pop-up window will simply produce an error message that it can’t connect to the network. You either have to dismiss it manually or wait for it to go (it’ll normally auto-close after about 30 seconds)
If you find this behaviour annoying and want to stop it, there’s a very simple solution (and one that’s also easy to undo if you want to reverse it). Here’s what you do.
1. First go to
[Hard Disk] > System > Library > CoreServices > Captive Network Assistant.app
Click on the app once, and hit ‘return’ on your keyboard. This will make the name editable.
2. Hit the ‘left arrow’ key once to move the cursor to the beginning of the name and to unselect the text.
3. Type an ‘X’ (actually any letter will do, but I like ‘X’ so I can easily find the app later at the bottom of the list even if I forgot its exact name).
4. Hit ‘return’ on the keyboard. At this point, OS X will ask you to provide an Admin password as only Admin users are allowed to mess with files in the System directory. Type in your password and hit ‘OK’.
The name should now read ‘XCaptive Network Assistant.app’.
And that’s it! Captive Network Assistant will never run again unless you decide to change its name back to what it was (to do so, just repeat the procedure above and remove the ‘X’). Of course, you can still login to your internet or coffee shop wifi services by opening a normal browser window. The bonus is now your browser can fill the login details from cookies (if enabled) or your password manager.
featured picture: illuminated jellyfish by weaverglenn
problems with wifi, Safari and Mountain Lion
If you’ve upgraded to Mountain Lion and traded swift wifi and fast Safari for a flakey internet connection and sluggish browser, you are not alone. Widespread reports of problems with wifi, Safari and Mountain Lion have been mounting ever since July 25th. However, unlike the lengthy debacle with similar wifi problems experienced after the Lion upgrade last year, a lot of users are finding their problems can be solved by using one or more of the tips below.
1. Create a new location and renew the DHCP lease
OS X Daily have a step-by-step procedure here
http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/02/fix-os-x-mountain-lion-wireless-connection-problems/
that is proving hugely successful. Don’t forget to follow their second step about changing the MTU value while you’re at it.
2. Reset default system preferences
If that didn’t do it for you, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and enter Terminal! Open the Terminal.app from
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
and paste this command
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist
then press ‘return’.
You will need to restart your mac to see if this has had any beneficial effect, so do that now.
3. Do PRAM & SMC resets
If you’re still suffering problems, it’s time for a couple of system resets. To do the SMC reset you will need to see what kind of mac you have, as the procedure is different for some models. Take a look here and follow the instructions for your model.
Before powering up after the SMC reset, also take the trouble to do a PRAM reset. To do that:
i. Ensure the machine is powered off.
ii. Locate the following keys on your keyboard in preparation for Step 4:
‘command’ – ‘option’ – ‘P’ – ‘R’
iii. Press the ‘power on’ button.
iv. Immediately – and before the grey screen appears – hold down ‘command-option-P-R’ all together.
v. Keep them held down until you’ve heard the start-up chime twice. After you release them you should hear it again, and hopefully your Mac will boot up without wifi/Safari issues.
4. Check Wifi connection
And if that doesn’t work? Time to check your wifi connection. See how strong your signal-to-noise ratio is. You need something in the order of 25 or higher. To find out whether you signal is strong enough, hold down the ‘option’ key and click on the wifi icon in the menu bar. Choose Open Wifi Diagnostics from the menu.
When you see the welcome screen, ignore the ‘Continue’ button and instead press ‘command-N’ on your keyboard.
Click wifi scan in the task bar and scroll to the right where you will see two numbers, ‘signal’ and ‘noise’. Ignore the minus ‘-’ signs, and subtract the signal number from the ‘noise’ number. Anything over 25 is a good enough signal, below that and the signal is too weak for a reliable connection. Over 40 is excellent (in the example below, you can see the SNR is 34, a pretty good signal for a home router located on the next floor).
If your SNR is lower than 25 you need to either move the computer closer to the router or find a better connection. If the ‘Noise’ shows a very low figure (equals more noise), you can try changing the channel on your router. Look at the other routers in the list and if they are using the same channel as yours, switch your router to something else between 1 and 11.
5. Reinstall OS X
If all else fails…some users are reporting that simply reinstalling OS X is solving the problem for them. Reinstalling doesn’t touch your Apps or user data, but its always wise to make sure you have a backup before undertaking such an operation.
To reinstall, restart the computer while also holding down ‘command-R’ on the keyboard. From the Utilities window that opens up, choose ‘Reinstall OS X’.
Still having problems? Let us know in the comments below.
featured picture: Internet by ~vagraine
how to empty caches in Safari 6
Since the old ‘Empty Cache…’ item has gone missing in the main menu in Safari 6.0, you might be thinking this function has been removed. Actually, its still there, but is somewhat hidden.
Go to
Safari > Preferences > Advanced
and check the Show Develop menu in menubar button at the bottom.
In Safari’s menu bar, choose Develop > Empty Caches.
Alternatively, you can just use the keyboard shortcut
option-command-E
Don’t forget you also have quite a lot of flexibility by unchecking or checking different options in
Safari > Reset Safari
For example, you can clear just the cookie cache by unselecting everything except ‘Remove website data’ (this can also be achieved in the Privacy tab in Safari Preferences, too).
block MacKeeper and other browser ads
Generally, I like to keep browser extensions down to a minimum, but here’s an essential one if you are tired of all those ‘Clean your mac’ / ‘Speed up your mac’ ads on every website you visit. Download and install the Safari adblock extension from here:
What I like about this particular adblocker is that, if you go with the default filters, not only does it load your pages faster but it also reformats the page as if the ads were never even there, rather than leaving unsightly, blank placeholders in the page as some other ad filtering services do.
The extension is free, though you’re encouraged to donate if you appreciate the work done by the developer.
Related Posts
how to uninstall MacKeeper
how to remove ‘Top Sites’ in Safari
If you are fed up with the ‘Top Sites’ feature in Safari, here’s how to remove it.
1. In Safari > Preferences > General, change ‘New windows open with’ and ‘New tabs open with’ to either ‘Homepage’ or ‘Empty page’ (as you prefer).
2. In Safari > Preferences > Bookmarks, uncheck ‘Include Top Sites’.
Now you also need to get rid of the caches, and to stop Safari from continually storing images of your web page history (Tip: Safari will still track your History in the normal way, but here we are going to prevent it from downloading the image files that are used in Top Sites), so:
3. In Safari > Reset Safari…, check ‘Reset Top Sites’ and ‘Remove all webpage preview images’.
Click ‘Reset’.
4. Go to your home folder Library (~/Library) by clicking on the Folder icon in the dock, pressing ‘shift-command-g’, and typing ~/Library in the box.
Navigate to Caches > com.apple.Safari.
5. Click once on the Cache.db file. Hit ‘command-i’ on the keyboard. In the Get Info panel that opens, check the ‘Locked’ box. Close the panel.
6. Click on the Webpage Previews folder in com.apple.Safari and press ‘command-i’. Check the ‘Locked’ box. Close the panel.
7. Navigate back to Caches > Metadata > Safari> Bookmarks. Go into the Bookmarks folder, hit ‘command-a’ and then ‘command-delete’ to send all the selected files to the Trash.
8. With the Bookmarks folder selected in Finder, press ‘command-i’ and check the ‘Locked’ box. Close the panel.
That’s it. No more ‘Top Sites’, and no more wasted time or space downloading and storing webpage previews! :- )
turn off auto paging in Safari
Jul 24
Posted by philastokes
Having problems with Safari loading more than one page when you click a link? In blogs like WordPress, clicking on the ‘comments’ link can cause Safari to behave a bit oddly, only loading the comments briefly before loading more than one page onto the screen.
If you’re having this problem, try turning off the auto-page extension tool. Go to the Safari menu at the top of the screen, next to the Apple logo. Click the menu and chose ‘Preferences…’. Click the Extensions tab. Look for ‘AutoPagerize’ in the list on the left hand side. Click it, and un-check the ‘Enable’ box. Job done!
Safari Preferences:
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Posted in OS X Lion, Safari 5.1
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Tags: autopage, autopagerize, autopaging, can't see comments, disable auto page, disable autopage, page loading, safari, safari loading too many pages, Wordpress