HOW TO SPEEDUP SAFARI ON MAC OS X MOUNTAIN LION 10.8

Safari is one of the world's most innovative, easy to use and elegant browser designed to enable you to see web pages full screen and free of any desktop distractions. It takes advantage of Multi-Touch technology built into your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices. Safari web pages can fill the window of your device when you turn them on. You can even zoom the web pages in and out just by double tapping or by pinching and extending your fingers on your device screen. Safari is indeed a blazing fast and easy to use browser, but it can go slow if your browsing history and caches piles up or if it is storing heaps of auto fill entries. In this article I am going to show you how to keep your browser healthy and running faster on Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8..

EMPTY THE CACHE

As we know, Safari uses caching to save recently viewed websites on your hard drive. If your cache gets too big or corrupted, it will cause your computer to slow down to a crawl.
One easy way to ensure your browser is always healthy and fast is to regularly clear all your browsing history and caches.
To empty the cache memory on your Mac, just go to the Safari Menu and click Empty Cache. A popup window will appear explaining what will happen. Just click OK to proceed and you are done.

CHANGE SAFARI HOMEPAGE

By default, Safari homepage is Apple's site which usually takes a while to load up every time you turn your browser on. I would suggest you change that to Google homepage which will load up faster. When changing Google as your homepage, make sure you turn off auto complete function as it will slow down your browser. To do so just start up your browser and on the address column type:http://www.google.com/webhpcomplete=0&Hl=en. Once Google homepage is launched, you can set it as your homepage by going to your Safari Menu bar and click onto Safari, then click on Preferences, go to Homepage and click "Set to Current page".Now you are done and the next time you launch your browser Google will be your homepage, and you will notice how fast your browser loads up.

RESET SAFARI

Apple provide a quick and easy way to empty cache, erase browsing history, clear cookies and reset auto fill information on your Mac. This can usually provide a quick fix for improving your Mac's performance but the disadvantage is you will need to re-enter again all your log in information and password on websites that had previously stored data in cookies on your computer. To reset Safari just go to Safari menu and click Reset Safari. A popup window will appear explaining what will happen. Just click OK to proceed and it will reset Safari to default.

CHECK & DISABLE EXTENSIONS

Extensions and plugins on Safari are useful features that help to perform many tasks such as blocking unwanted pop up ads, but occasionally they can cause Safari to slow down to a crawl or even crash. It is advisable to ensure that all the extensions and plugins are always up to date, and try to disable those you do not use by manually turning them off. To manage the extensions and plugins on Safari, just follow the following steps.

1. Open go to Safari Menu and open preferences.
2. Navigate to the Extensions tab and disable whichever extensions you don't need or those you think may be causing Safari to slow down. You can choose to either enable or disable all extensions with the slider switch or select each extension individually from the left hand side panel by using the Enable checkbox located on the main window. To update any extensions individually, just click Updates at the bottom the side panel beneath the list of extensions.

SETUP NEW TAB

By default, Safari homepage Toolbar does not show any New Tab. Say for example if you are browsing on a certain webpage and at the same time you need to look up some other websites, you will not be able to find any New Tab to open them. Here I am going to show you how to add New Tab on your Safari Toolbar. First go to your Toolbar and right click on the grey empty space on your Toolbar, a tiny popup window will appear. Click customize Toolbar. Another popup window will appear requesting you to drag your favourite items onto the toolbar. Just drag the New Tab icon from the list onto the top right hand corner next to your Toolbar. Then click Done. Now the next step you need to do is go to click on Safari>Preferences, a popup window will appear. Go to click the down arrow on the New Tab open with and check empty page or homepage (if you are using Google as your homepage). Close the popup window and you are done.

Hope you enjoy this article!

Joe
Sydney, Australia.