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Simple Apple Tutorials

🔗 4 tips to manage browsing with Safari profiles

Published about 1 month ago • 2 min read

Hey Reader! 👋

For this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use Safari profiles on your Mac to separate your web browsing for work and personal use.

😖 The issue

A lot of us have different roles in our lives—like parent, employee, coach, teacher, or student. And as a result, we browse the web differently, depending on what role we’re in at any given time.

If we’re at work, we have a different set of websites and bookmarks than we do when we’re paying personal bills or organizing a family trip.

Without a system in place, having all those jumbled websites and browsing history can feel stressful and chaotic. 😵‍💫

Starting with Safari 17, Apple provided a way to separate your web browsing for the various roles in our lives. This makes it WAY easier to keep our web browsing organized and still easily switch back and forth between them.

The best part?

Safari profiles sync across your Mac, iPhone, and iPad over iCloud using your Apple ID. 🥳

Let’s take a look at some of the settings for Safari profiles and how they work together across your Apple devices.

👇 Give it a try

Create a new profile from the Mac

  1. From the menu bar in Safari, choose Safari. Then choose Settings… and then Profiles in the options along the top of the window.
  2. Click Start Using Profiles. Then give your new profile a name, symbol, color, and list of favorites to use.
  3. Click Create Profile.

Switch between profiles on the Mac

Once you create a profile, you’ll see a new button in the Safari toolbar with the name, symbol, and color you selected for that profile.

Click the profile button to open a menu and then choose one of the following options:

  1. New [Profile] Window: this opens a new Safari window using that profile.
  2. Switch to [Profile] Window: this switches Safari to that profile without opening a new window.

Open links with profiles

By default, when you open a link from outside of Safari, they open in the most recent profile. But you can choose what links you want to open in a specific profile.

  1. Go to the website that you want to set up to use a specific profile.
  2. From the menu bar in Safari, choose Safari. Then choose Settings… and then Websites in the options along the top of the window.
  3. In the sidebar, choose Open Links With profile.
  4. Then, choose the profile you want to use for that website.

Delete a profile

If you don’t want a profile any longer, you can delete it along with it’s history, cookies, and other website data. Your Favorites and bookmarks are preserved.

  1. From the menu bar in Safari, choose Safari. Then choose Settings… and then Profiles in the options along the top of the window.
  2. Pick a profile on the left and click the Delete button (-) at the bottom of the list.

Bonus: Changing a profile on iOS

To change a profile on iOS, open Safari, then tap the two overlapping squares icon in the lower corner.

Tap the downward-facing chevron at the bottom, then pick the profile you want to use.

🗳️ Poll

✨ One more thing

Did you know Apple has a built-in feature called text replacements.

A text replacement turns a short abbreviation into a longer word or phrase. This makes typing WAY faster.

If you want to learn how to type faster on your iPhone keyboard, check out this tutorial from the archive.​

Until next time, see ya! 👋

Gannon

​

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Simple Apple Tutorials

Gannon Nordberg shares simple tutorials to help you become a smarter Apple user in 3 minutes or less. Every 2 weeks, you'll get 1 actionable tutorial on how to use your Apple tech to be more organized, productive, and stress-free. Former Apple Certified Consultant and Mac Technician of 7 years.

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