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You are here: Home / How to / How To Fully Reset Safari On Mac

How To Fully Reset Safari On Mac

Last updated on August 29, 2019 By Serhat Kurt 4 Comments

This article explains how you can fully reset Safari on your Mac. You might need to do this if Safari on your Mac runs very slowly, crashes often, acts bizarre, or functions incorrectly.

See also: Your System Is Infected With (3) Viruses

Safari is included with the macOS operating system.

How to reset Safari

1-Remove site history

There are two ways to do this. If you want to remove particular web sites (e.g., a web site is giving you problems whenever you visit) then try the second option. Please also note that if you are using other Apple devices (iOS devices or other Macs), if you turn on Safari in iCloud preferences with the same Apple ID, your site browsing history will be removed from all of them.

See also: How To Change Default Search Engine in Safari

When you do this, you will be removing history of web sites you visited, recent searchers, list of download items, frequently visited sites list, web sites that asked to use your located and to send you notifications.

Option # 1

  • Open Safari
  • Click Safari located in the menu bar in the top left hand corner of your screen
  • Click Clear History
  • You can choose different time period options: last hour, today, today and yesterday, all history. Select one.Safari clear history
  • Click the Clear History button

Option # 1

  • Open Safari
  • Click Safari located in the menu bar in the top left hand corner of your screen
  • Click Preferences
  • Click the Privacy tab
  • Click the manage Website Data button
  • Here you can remove everything, or you can remove specific web sites. You can also search to find a specific web site.

2-Clear web caches 

Here is how you can clear Safari’s caches. Caches are images and videos, or the layouts for entire web pages you browsed.

  • In the Safari app, click Safari
  • Click Preferences
  • Click the Advanced tab
  • Check the ‘Show Develop menu in menu bar’ box.Safari Develop menu
  • Close the Preferences window
  • Now you will see a new menu bar item called ‘Develop’
  • Click Develop
  • Select Empty Caches from this menuSafari clear cache

Disable Safari extensions

Extensions are small programs that extends your Safari’s functionalities. They add new features to let you enhance and customize your browsing experience. But some may have bugs and thus cause problems. And you may want to turn them off. Here is how:

  • Choose Safari from the Safari menu bar
  • Click Preferences
  • Click the Extensions tab
  • For each extension, you can use the checkbox to enable or disable that particular extension.
  • You can also uninstall extensions.

Disable Safari plugins 

Please note that Safari is no longer supporting most plugins. You can however view and manage the plugins you have installed. Here is how:

  • Click Safari
  • Click Preferences
  • Click the Websites tab
  • From the list on the left, use the checkbox to enable and disable the plugin. Select the checkbox to the left of the plug-in name if you want to enable it.Safari plugins
  • When you are done, close the window

See also: How To See The Full Web Site Address In Safari URL Bar

Filed Under: How to Tagged With: Safari

Comments

  1. Dennis Gudgeon says

    October 25, 2020 at 12:37 am

    Safari 14
    I cannot attach photos into facebook, its takes forever to open any websites, i have cleared the history and still takes forever, its like something is running in the background making my computer run slow. We don’t even use this computer very much as we do most surfing on our iPad, we have att wifi which shows 4 bars on the wifi icon. Can the problem be to many files on the computer or in the iCloud?

    Reply
  2. Tony Sciarra says

    October 19, 2020 at 3:09 am

    No facebook or youtube since updating to Big Sur 11.0
    Safari is not working properly.

    Reply
    • Guru says

      November 18, 2020 at 8:35 am

      Safari not working at all…i couldn’t even open http://www.google.com

      Reply
  3. Liviu says

    June 25, 2020 at 11:18 am

    Hi,
    I have done all steps recommended, YouTube still does not play on MacBook Air. YouTube opens alright, but when I try playing a video, it won’t play, just that circle on the screen that keeps rotating. Can you please help me solve this problem.
    I am not computer savvy.
    Thank you,
    Liviu

    Reply

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