Change General preferences in Safari on Mac

Safari opens with

Choose how each Safari session starts: with a new window, a new private window, or all the windows from your last session.

This option is shown only if “Close windows when quitting an app” is selected in the General pane of System Preferences.

New windows open with

Choose what a new Safari window contains.

• Favourites: See websites you’ve marked as Favourites.

• Top Sites: See websites you visit most often.

• Homepage: The homepage you set in the Homepage field below.

• Empty Page: An empty Safari window with no page address or content.

• Same Page: The web page you most recently viewed.

• Tabs for Favourites: All the bookmarks in Favourites as a set of tabs.

• Choose tabs folder: The bookmarks in the bookmarks folder you choose.

New tabs open with

Choose what a new tab contains.

• Favourites: See websites you’ve marked as Favourites.

• Top Sites: See websites you visit most often.

• Homepage: The homepage you set in the Homepage field below.

• Empty Page: An empty Safari window with no page address or content.

• Same Page: The web page you most recently viewed.

Homepage

Enter the URL of the web page you want to use as your homepage, or click Set to Current Page to use the current active page.

Remove history items

Choose when to remove items from the history.

Favourites shows

Choose the bookmarks folder whose bookmarks you want shown on the Favourites page and in the Favourites view that appears below the Smart Search field.

Top Sites shows

Choose how many websites Top Sites shows.

File download location

Choose where to save items you download from the Internet, or have Safari always ask where you want to save downloads.

Remove download list items

Choose when to remove items from the list.

Open “safe” files after downloading

In Safari, automatically open the listed types of files but not software.