Stupid Simple Mac Tips #54 – Cleaning Safari in Five Simple Steps
Ever find yourself waiting impatiently waiting for a search to populate in Safari?
All web browsers collect internet junk over time, like the junk drawer in your kitchen 😱.
Every time someone visits a website, including social media, it leaves traces on the computer that are harmless in a perfect world.
How do you think a website remembers your username and action history?
It drops cookies in Safari to improve your experience the next time you visit the same site.
Eventually, all those cookie crumbs add up and slow down Safari’s performance.
Cookies receive all the attention, but it’s not the only thing dragging your surfing speed down. Other data collects and clogs up Safari too.
Every interaction with a website creates data, such as icons and the list of downloaded items. They’re helpful, yes, but not very useful.
Here’s how to clean up Safari and keep it running as good as new. [Warning] This WILL delete your history, so if you often find that really useful, keep it. If you don’t, move ahead!
Clean Safari in five steps
- Open Safari
- Select History (shown across the top menu bar)
- Select ‘Clear History’
- Choose a time to erase > Options are to clear the:
- Last hour
- Today
- Today and yesterday
- All hisotry
- Select ‘Clear History’ again
This can also be useful if you want to wipe any cookies that were stored in a recent browsing session, during which you’d choose the short time frame that best fits your needs.
That’s all there is to it. Simple, isn’t it?
OK, what did I clean out?
I promise, you didn’t delete anything irreplaceable; browsing history, cache, autofill and cookies are included in the cleaning process. So, the next time Safari seems slow, clear that History and get it back up to speed!
