Move or Remove Icons from Safari Bookmarks Menu in Mac OS X

Jan 23, 2015 - 16 Comments

Safari bookmark menu in OS X

When you click into the URL bar of Safari in MacOS and Mac OS X, a panel menu of website bookmark icons appears directly under the address bar. This can offer a quick way to access web bookmarks in Safari from a Mac, but it’s fairly likely you’ll discover a few bookmarks in the icon view that you don’t really want showing in the bookmark list.


Removing (or simply moving) web icons from the bookmark icons panel in Safari is super easy, and, as the appearance may suggest, it works a lot like LaunchPad or the iOS Home Screen.

How to Hide Icons from the Safari Bookmarks Dropdown Menu on Mac

  1. Click into the URL bar of Safari to reveal the bookmark icons view
  2. Click and hold on any website bookmark icon that you want to remove, then simply drag it out of the bookmarks panel and outside of the browser window
  3. Repeat as necessary for other bookmarks and/or bookmark folders

Remove icons from the Safari for Mac Bookmarks panel

You can also use this trick to rearrange icons in the Safari Bookmarks panel, simply click and drag the icons around like you would move icons in LaunchPad, the Dock, or an iOS home screen.

At the very least you may wish to remove some of the default bookmark and bookmark icons from this list, perhaps you’re not a fan of the so-called “Popular” folder of websites, or maybe you just only want a specific selection of website bookmarks visible in this screen.

Safari Bookmark panel icons in Mac OS X

A related note for the web developers and web designers out there; the icons shown in this MacOS / OS X Safari bookmarks panel are the exact same as are defined by apple-touch-icon.png and the iOS website bookmark icons. If you haven’t done so, just create a retina version of the Apple Touch Icon and place that file in the root web directory for it to work here in Safari for Mac OS X and for iOS home screen bookmarks too. If you’re not a web worker, well, you just learned something new about how these bookmark icons work, right?

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

16 Comments

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  1. Vern Novack says:

    I want to restore icons to the safari web site, browser.
    Howcan I move icons from favourite menu to safari browser

  2. Jim says:

    I still cannot remove the drop down menu when typing in the address bar doing all the above suggestions. It is very annoying when I just want to type in a single address and Safari and not having it suggest several websites I don’t want to go to at that time. Any other suggestions or fixes possible.

    Thanks

  3. Jim says:

    I still cannot remove the drop down menu when typing in t

  4. Mike says:

    For Apple to decide to make that change in behavior without an obvious way to retract it is annoying Having that menu take a big chunk of the screen is INFURIATING!

    I’ve searched for a fix several times

    T H A N K S for this tip

  5. Icebox says:

    How do I remove the “Show Favorites” icon on my Favorites Bar??? I don’t want it on there.

  6. !! says:

    very good. Thanks!

  7. ! says:

    I removed that as soon as I installed Yosemite. If I want to go to my bookmarks I’ll use the bookmarks section. I’ve had almost no errors with Safari in Yosemite.

  8. Eddy says:

    I agree with anon above. Safari is unworkable. The pages hang and hang for ages when loading. I tried it out again when Yosemite came out, however, the problem remains. Various discussion forums acknowledge the issue and it tends to be blamed on extensions. Whatever, Chrome does the business for me.

  9. Fnordmeister says:

    “A related note for the web developers and web designers out there; the icons shown in this OS X Safari bookmarks panel are the exact same as are defined by apple-touch-icon.png and the iOS website bookmark icons. If you haven’t done so, just create a retina version of the Apple Touch Icon and place that file in the root web directory for it to work here in Safari for OS X and for iOS home screen bookmarks too.”

    If web developers won’t cooperate, is it possible for us users to change the default image? (For instance, for the websites in the 2nd row of the picture at the top of this page.)

  10. Ivan says:

    Not very good tip, if you have personal bookmarks and you remove their icon, your bookmarks will disappear for ever – gone. If you don’t have back up of those bookmarks, you looking at big time restoration. I guest there is one more bug for Safari.
    Bookmarks which came with Safari will came back .

  11. Ant says:

    How do I get rid of the icons in the actual window if I don’t want them. At the moment, anything I look at, ends up with an icon in there! I want to be able to choose what I want easy access to!

  12. josé says:

    very good, excellent

  13. Anonymous says:

    Safari has just been a nightmare! I’ve been using Chromium since Snow Leopard and it’s been fine and dandy; never got the hang of Safari but I liked the new look in Yosemite so thought I’d try it as my main browser but it was a lamentable mess. I can’t even block certain websites from setting cookies!

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