How to Hide the Safari Favorite Bookmark Menu URL Dropdown in Mac OS X

Jan 25, 2015 - 15 Comments

Hide the bookmark icon dropdown menu thing when clicking on a URL in Safari

Mac Safari users in the latest versions of OS X have discovered that when the URL bar is clicked in Safari, a panel of bookmark icons and Favorites appears. This is a lot like how Safari iOS works, and these icons can be clicked to visit sites quickly, or moved, removed, and rearranged as desired. But some Mac users may wish to not see the bookmark favorites icon drop down menu thing at all, and would rather just be able to click into the URL bar of Safari and enter a site address or search term without the popup.

If the bookmarks dropdown menu bothers you, you can quickly turn it off in Safari settings, though the preference isn’t necessarily named something you would expect:

Hiding the Safari Bookmark Icon Menu in Mac OS X

  1. pull down the “Safari” menu and choose “Preferences”
  2. Select the “Search” tab
  3. Uncheck the box next to “Show Favorites” under the ‘Smart Search Field’ section
  4. Close Preferences as usual

Disable the bookmark favorite icons in Mac OS X Safari

Now when you click into the URL bar of Safari, the large favorites and bookmark menu will no longer appear as a drop down selection. Instead, you’ll see just a simple URL bar that is highlighted.

Hide the bookmark icon dropdown menu thing when clicking on a URL in Safari

Compared to how this looks before, which, while making it very easy to view your favorite websites and bookmarks, looks a bit more cluttered.

Bookmark favorite drop down icons

Whether or not you use or like this particular feature is obviously a matter of personal preference.

Speaking of the the same search field in new versions of Safari, you can default back to showing a websites full URL with a Safari settings adjustment too. Why the complete URL is hidden by default in OS X Yosemite is assumed to be a simplification attempt, but switching that back is a feature that is highly recommended to change for most Mac users, particularly those who work with the web or who just want to see exactly where on any given website they are visiting.

Thanks to Dale for the great tip idea left in our comments!

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

15 Comments

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  1. itasara says:

    That drop down favorites menu in Ventura was driving me crazy. It was on my list to call Apple support and ask out to get it to stop. Then I decided to see if there was anything on the Internet about this, and I came across this site. Thank you so much!!! Now I can touch the url area without that annoying favorites window getting in my face.

  2. LosingThePlot says:

    Oh thank you. Old Sierra machine crashed, no choice but to go to High Sierra, the settings are driving me nuts. This was out-the-window time, you’ve saved me!

  3. Free Atlast says:

    Wow….that was driving me insane!! I was about to go back to another browser. Thanks for the post!!!!

  4. Mara kurtz says:

    Thanks for the instructions for turning off bookmarks!!!
    It drove me crazy!! I tried everything.
    Bravo.
    Mara

  5. Melody says:

    “I unselected every item in the SmartSearch Field section of Search Preferences and STILL getting the auto suggest box showing Top Hit, History & Bookmarks etc. etc. Closed Safari and opened it again STILL there. I wish I had never upgraded to Yosemite so bad…..”

    I couldn’t agree more. When my Macbook air crashed the people at the Apple store upgraded to Yosemite for me, biggest mistake of my life

    I unchecked every item, and it shows “top hits” and “bookmarks and favorites” as I start typing a site. And the funny part is, the booksmarks and favorites aren’t even in my bookmarks/favorite, like its a instagram post that i clicked on ONCE. Please there has GOT to be a way. I removed all cookies, deleted history 500x, turned off/on laptop, cmon when is this gonna be fixed, is a just a bug or how long will it last?

    Very annoying I don’t feel free to stalk people twitter/insta LOL

    • Yessenia says:

      Same issue with me! It is so annoying and I still cannot figure it out. This update has done nothing but made things much slower and complicated. Please advise if you do end up finding the solution.

      Thanks in advance!

  6. TBull says:

    I unselected every item in the SmartSearch Field section of Search Preferences and STILL getting the auto suggest box showing Top Hit, History & Bookmarks etc. etc. Closed Safari and opened it again STILL there. I wish I had never upgraded to Yosemite so bad…..

  7. Lori says:

    Don’t know why they think we all want more… sometimes less is better.

    Bookmark menu drop down. I’d like to know how to get rid of this annoyance on IOS 8. or at least delete several.

  8. This was driving me nuts, and I can’t believe I didn’t think about turning this off until now. I like to drag URLs into my favorites folders, but I can’t do that with this feature turned on. Now I can do that again. I’m happy now.

  9. john says:

    I use the URL favorites feature and find it better for me. My favorites are setup with a group of folders and a few site links. At first I was not sure, but I tried it for a while and now like using it instead of a series of dropdown menus to navigate from the favorites bar. The favorites bar is now hidden and makes for a cleaner appearance.

  10. Icebox says:

    So much better now. Thanks.

  11. Pariece says:

    OMG!! Thank you for this.. Life just got so much better

  12. Slade says:

    Thanks so much,this was driving me nuts.
    Good riddance. 👏

  13. Sharon says:

    TYVM – annoyance , perfectly stated by JP.

  14. JP says:

    Hallelujah! One more annoyance from OS X Yosemite that we can roll back. 1 down, 500 to go!

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