Update Your Safari Smarts
Few apps get as much use as your Web browser, so any time saved there really adds up. Sierra’s Safari brings a number of enhancements: shop online using Apple Pay, browse recently closed tabs ①, attach descriptions to your bookmarks so that they’re easier to search, better control plug-ins, and more. We’ll look at the coolest new Safari features and catch you up on other recent ones you might have missed.
New! Apple Pay for Safari
No longer just a technology for speeding up credit card transactions on the go, Apple Pay now works in Safari, too. Why would you want to use it? It’s a good question, since you probably already automatically fill in credit card details using a password manager or Safari’s Autofill—or you pay with PayPal.
What Apple Pay offers is less hassle and more security than a typical online credit or debit card purchase. There’s no need to open a separate site, enter a password, click through a form, or go through any of the usual rigamarole. Instead, shopping becomes a one-click experience that’s not only faster, but also less likely to result in your card information being stolen.
Your card number is never stored in the merchant’s database; instead, Apple Pay sends a token that matches up with your credit card. That means even if hackers intercepted the data or cracked the merchant’s database, they won’t have anything on you.
To use Apple Pay in Safari, first you must set it up on your iOS device (and, if you’ve got one, Apple Watch).
Follow these steps to set up Apple Pay:
- With your card in hand, on your iOS device, open the Settings app.
- Tap Wallet & Apple Pay.
- Follow the simple prompts, which include waiting for the bank to verify the card and bless its use for Apple Pay.
- In the main Wallet & Apple Pay screen, make sure that the Allow Payments on Mac switch is on ②.
If you didn’t connect the card to an Apple Watch during Step 3 above, you can connect it later. In the Watch app, on the My Watch screen, tap Wallet & Apple Pay > Add Credit or Debit Card and tap Add in the card’s listing.
Once you’ve set up Apple Pay, so long as your Mac and iOS device are signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID, when you shop online in Safari, participating shopping sites will display a “Pay with ” or “Pay” button as you complete a purchase ③. (For a list of stores that should accept Apple Pay online and in the flesh, see this Apple page.)
You must have your iPhone or iPad, or iPhone and Apple Watch, with you for this to work. (In fact, the Apple Pay logo, in some cases, will appear only if your device is nearby!). Verify your identity by using Touch ID (Apple’s fingerprint sensor) on your iPhone or iPad, or by double-pressing the side button on your Apple Watch.
New! More Searchable Bookmarks
Safari lets you bookmark Web pages for easy access later, but if you bookmark a lot of pages, finding one becomes a pain. Now when you create a new bookmark by choosing Bookmarks > Add Bookmark (Command-D), you can add a short description to make searching for it easier ④. (Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a process for adding descriptions to the bookmarks you already have, yet.)
Later, choose Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks, type something from the description—say, summer vacation—in the search field, and voila! matching bookmarks appear.
New! Better Plug-in Control
Safari disables proprietary plug-ins like Flash, Java, Silverlight, and QuickTime by default, but as of Sierra it also makes it easier to use the technologies when you want.
If a site offers both a Flash and an HTML5 version of a video, for instance, the HTML5 version will play. Otherwise, you’ll be asked whether you want to use Flash for this site every time or just this once ⑤. (You can also cancel.)
To adjust Safari’s plug-in settings by hand, choose Safari > Preferences > Security and click the Plug-in Settings button. Select the name of a plug-in in the list on the left and then click the pop-up menu next to a site’s name and choose Off, On, or Ask ⑥.You can also change Safari’s overall behavior toward a plug-in here. At the bottom of the window, click the pop-up menu next to “When visiting other websites” and choose Off, On, or Ask.
New! Open Recently Closed Tabs
It’s happened to us all: your attention strays and before you know it you’ve pressed Command-W or clicked the X 
at a tab’s corner. You’ve closed a tab (or two, or three) by accident and now you want it back! Other browsers, like Google Chrome, have let users recover recently closed tabs for years. Sierra now builds in this capability. You can:
- Click and hold the plus
button on the Tab Bar to see, and choose from, a list of Recently Closed Tabs. - Choose History > Recently Closed and choose from the list there.
- Reopen the last closed tab by choosing History > Reopen Last Closed Tab or pressing Command-Shift-T.
- Use the Undo command (Command-Z) multiple times to reopen recently closed tabs. Previously, you could do this only once.
Find a Lost Tab with Tab View
Do you have a crazy mess of tabs? Safari’s Tab view offers an easy way to find the one you seek. Click the Show All Tabs 
button in the toolbar, choose View > Show All Tabs, or press Command-Shift- to invoke it.
This Mission Control–like overview shows thumbnails of all tabs you have open in a window, grouped by site ⑦. Below is a list of tabs open on your other Apple devices via iCloud sync. Click any entry to jump to it on your Mac.
If you’re not happy to see a tab you left open on one of your devices revealed, move your pointer over its entry and click the Remove 
button. And, try to use private browsingForce Clickwhen you want to keep your surfing habits to yourself! (See In Case You Missed It: Private Browsing, at the end of this chapter.)
Pin Your Go-to Sites
One of El Capitan’s most useful Safari additions was pinned tabs. If you didn’t get around to giving this feature a whirl, now’s the time, especially if you keep certain sites—say, Facebook, Gmail—open in your browser all the time. Safari lets you pin those sites to the side of the Tab Bar (View > Show Tab Bar) for one-click access ⑧.
Pinned sites are similar to favorites. Bookmarks saved as favorites appear the Favorites Bar (View > Show Favorites Bar). But pinned sites differ in important ways:
- Up-to-date info: Pinned sites update in the background, so they always include current content.
- No wasted space: Favorites—labeled by the pages’ names unless you’ve renamed them, often take up a lot of space, but a pinned tab is only as wide as the site’s custom icon or, if it doesn’t include one, the first letter of the site’s domain.
- Easy to find: When you start opening tabs, they stack up left to right. Open a favorite and it mixes with the rest, which means you have to hunt to find the tab you want. (Or worse, you keep opening them in more new tabs—adding to the chaos!) Pinned tabs are always fixed in place at the left of the Tab Bar.
- Designed to stay put: Pinned sites stay, well, pinned. Click a favorite on the Favorites Bar and then click an external link on the page. What happens? The tab fills with the external link’s page. (Unless you Command-click the link to open it in its own tab.) Pinned sites work differently: Navigate to the pinned site’s subpages and they load in the pinned site’s tab. External links automatically open in separate tabs so that you don’t lose your place.
- Not synced across devices: You can access your favorites in Safari on all devices that use the same iCloud account. Not so for pinned tabs. Once you’ve pinned a page, it appears in the Tab Bar of all new Safari windows, but only on that particular Mac. You’ll need to recreate your pinned tabs elsewhere.
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Synced by content: Pinned tabs may not sync across your devices, but their content does synchronize across open windows on your Mac.
Say you open your pinned Facebook tab and navigate to a friend’s profile. Then, you open another Safari window and click the pinned Facebook tab there. It will not open to your Facebook home page; instead it will open to your friend’s profile. This behavior isn’t always helpful. If you want to compare two pages from the same site and try to use pinned tabs to do so, you’ll be thwarted.
Pinning a Site
Open an often-visited page and then do one of the following:
- Drag its tab to the left side of Safari’s tab bar.
- Control-click the tab and choose Pin Tab from the contextual menu ⑪.
- Choose Window > Pin Tab.
A tab the size of either the site’s custom icon or the first letter of its domain name appears. This is the pinned tab.
Removing a Pinned Site
- Drag its tab toward the right side of Safari’s Tab Bar.
- Control-click the site’s icon in the Tab Bar and choose Unpin Tab from the contextual menu ⑫.
- Choose Window > Unpin Tab. It turns back into a regular tab.
Essential Safari Shortcuts
- Back a Page: Command-[
- Forward a Page: Command-]
- Go to Next Tab: Control-Tab
- Go to Previous Tab: Control-Shift-Tab
- Close Tab: Command-W
- Show Tab View: Command-Shift-
- Zoom In: Command-Plus
- Zoom Out: Command-Minus
- New Window: Command-N
- New Private Window: Command-Shift-N
- Email This Page: Command-I
- Autofill Form: Command-Shift-A