One thing that annoys me the most about Safari on my Mac is the fact that when I open a link in a new tab, it’s active immediately; I’d prefer to have my links open in the background. For instance, if I’m reading a blog post with a list of top tools or services, I often click on the services that intrigue me, so that I can check them out once I’m done reading the post. Because of this, I don’t want each new tab becoming active as soon as I open it; nor do I want each item to open in the current tab. Wouldn’t it just make things easier if you could control how links opened and their position, along with when to make new tabs active? The good news is that you can and I’m going to share how, with an extension called LinkThing.
- First, you’ll need to install the LinkThing extension; it’s the ultimate tool for controlling your links in Safari.
- You should now see the LinkThing Settings icon in your browser toolbar.
If it’s not there, go to the View menu and then to Customize Toolbar; drag the “LinkThing Settings” icon to your toolbar. 3. Now click on the LinkThing Settings icon to bring up the settings window. This is where the magic happens; you’ll be able to customize how your links work and their positions in Safari. 4. Under General Settings, you can choose how links will open on all sites. Answering each of the following questions will help you to determine what your settings should be.
Should offsite/onsite links open in a new tab, current tab, or should the website you’re on decide? Do you want new tabs to be made active immediately or do you want them to open in the background? Do you want to use new windows instead of new tabs? Where do you want new tabs and background tabs to be positioned in your browser – beginning of tab bar, left of current tab, right of current tab, or end of tab bar? Do you want to use “Command + click” to automatically open new tabs? If so, should a right-click on your mouse or trackpad equal Command+click (should right-click automatically open new tabs)? Do you want to rewrite Google links in search results so that the actual URL is displayed instead of the default Google link? This setting allows you to see the actual URL.
- You can also choose how links should work individually for any website; you may not want the global settings to apply to some websites, so this tab is here for you to customize your links on a site-by-site basis.
For this, go to the website that you want to customize and open the LinkThing Settings window and click on the “settings for current site” tab. You can then customize how links work just for that website. 6. In the Advanced Settings tab, you can control how links open using specific keys and choose which ones to use.
That’s it. Now that you have control over your links in Safari and have them working the way you want, browsing should be a lot more enjoyable!
