Why is Safari so Dumb?

[Sovon Halder]

This happens to every website. I type up to "macru"...
I even have a bookmark for macrumors but still the "smart search field" decides to prompt me with a random website link, in this case some stupid us5.list-manage.com.

 

[AZhappyjack]

This happens to every website. I type up to "macru"...
I even have a bookmark for macrumors but still the "smart search field" decides to prompt me with a random website link, in this case some stupid us5.list-manage.com.


View attachment 1784187

why not just click on the bookmark?

 

[Apple_Robert]

It does that because that url comes up before the normal url for this site. Safari is doing what it is supposed to do. If you don't want to see recommendations, turn it off.

 

[Sovon Halder]

why not just click on the bookmark?

I do most of the times but there are many urls that are not in favourites. For example Facebook. When I type "face...", some horrendous advert website with a absurdly long URL is the first option - and then the second option url is facebook. Just weird.

If you don't want to see recommendations, turn it off.

There is no way to just "turn it off". If I want the top hit entry to be gone, I have to manually delete it from history. What bothers me is that I don't even know where that url came from, maybe a website that opened a popup, maybe a link from my mailbox, I have no way to tell for sure. I absolutely love Safari cause it's efficient, fast and I will continue to use it but just this one issue, damn. They talk about machine learning and whatnot; I think it isn't unfair to expect that Safari should at least be able to distinguish which urls look human readable and which ones don't. And based on that it should recommend.

 

[AZhappyjack]

I do most of the times but there are many urls that are not in favourites. For example Facebook. When I type "face...", some horrendous advert website with a absurdly long URL is the first option - and then the second option url is facebook. Just weird.


There is no way to just "turn it off". If I want the top hit entry to be gone, I have to manually delete it from history. What bothers me is that I don't even know where that url came from, maybe a website that opened a popup, maybe a link from my mailbox, I have no way to tell for sure. I absolutely love Safari cause it's efficient, fast and I will continue to use it but just this one issue, damn. They talk about machine learning and whatnot; I think it isn't unfair to expect that Safari should at least be able to distinguish which urls look human readable and which ones don't. And based on that it should recommend.

My suggestion would be to provide feedback to Apple:

Feedback - macOS

Apple wants to hear from you. Send us your comments and feedback about macOS.

www.apple.com

 

[bogdanw]

Safari was not dumb, it became dumb since the last releases. I noticed the problem too here #34
In the meantime, I think I have found the cause. Previously, suggestions from the search engine and Safari suggestions were separated. Now, if you disable “Include search engine suggestions”, it disables “Include Safari Suggestions” too. I guess Apple changed something in the way suggestions are made.

 

[rehkram]

I don't think it's dumb at all. Safari cannot read our minds.

What I mean is how can it possibly know whether a partial string we've typed is a Google search term or a desire to go directly to a website? It is giving you the choice.

In Chrome, unless you typed a well-formed web address, you'd just get the search results page, with the website(s) listed near the top, after any paid ads of course. So you'd have to parse all that and click on what you want. Safari is smarter by not being locked into Google's services. One less click and very little to parse.

 

[Lvivske]

I don't think it's dumb at all. Safari cannot read our minds.

What I mean is how can it possibly know whether a partial string we've typed is a Google search term or a desire to go directly to a website? It is giving you the choice.

In Chrome, unless you typed a well-formed web address, you'd just get the search results page, with the website(s) listed near the top, after any paid ads of course. So you'd have to parse all that and click on what you want. Safari is smarter by not being locked into Google's services. One less click and very little to parse.

if it was smart it would know the difference between a frequently visited website and a busted link

 

[rehkram]

Debateable.

 

[Sovon Halder]

Debateable.

1. A popular website that shows up on google + added in user's Favourites + is visited 23 times a day.
2. A website url that looks like a hexadecimal string - user never typed it - no bookmark or google result at all

No one is asking Safari to read minds of its users but there should at least be some sort of pattern recognition.
A smart browser should be able to distinguish between the two. There is nothing debatable about that.

 

[rehkram]

It's debatable whether I will bother debating it.

 

[macrumors3131]

At some point Safari was smart enough to prioritize links that you often visit. It's not even a matter of "reading minds". It knew the frequency of visits to the link and presented that first when you start typing the pattern. Then after some time Safari loses this knowledge and just begins random URLs that you don't even visit often. It's really annoying.

 

[bogdanw]

This is the difference between Safari 13 and Safari 14

Search in sidebar works as before in Safari 14

 

[katbel]

Any idea of how to check only the radio button of Safari suggestions?
I think is nonsense not keeping separated the suggestions engine from Safari suggestions
Or it has a meaning in case of pushing engine earnings ?

 

[macdos]

Just use Brave, the way a browser was intended to be. Safari is a fracking joke.

 

[macdos]

Is Safari dumb? Well, it doesn't remember site specific zoom preferences, for example es.wikipedia.com (it doesn't recognize subdomains, even when they are listed in the prefs file). It runs javascript in CACHED files (try cnn.com), suddenly upping CPU to 100%. It doesn't open at 0,0 as every other browser in the world does, and as it fracking should do. It has no useful customaization options to disable autoplay, javascript and so on by default.

It is not dumb, it is friggin retarded. Or "special" if you will.

 

[Sovon Halder]

I'd wager you don't fall into the category of a casual user. Things that you listed to be issues with Safari, I'd assume the majority of the people won't even have heard of those. All web browsers have their pros and certain other cons for sure. I've personally tested and tried everything popular that's out there, and then some from lesser known github projects. Now, I am not a software engineer, so I can't talk in techie-words BUT I am certain that with Safari I get the most premium experience of browsing the internet. I use chrome too about 5 minutes a day, to open outdated websites that my office forces me to open. For me Safari has always been the most efficient and least intrusive one plus I can use iCloud Keychain across other devices. If I were full time working on chrome I'd have to use a paid password manager like 1Password to sync across devices because the default password manager on chrome is a joke. To each his own I guess.