Mac: Safari Snapback

Ever wondered what that little orange arrow to the right of the Search Box or Address Box does in Safari? It's the Snapback button. If you perform a search using the search box and then start to navigate through URLs on the page, clicking on Snapback will take you back to the first page that you started navigating away from.

It's actually pretty smart when it comes to Google searches too. Rather than returning you to the first page of your results, it will return you to the point you left the search page through a link. If you go to the second page of search results, then pop into a link, Snapback will take you back to page two of your search.

It also works with bookmarks and addresses in the main address bar.

Having used tabbed browsers for many years the way I normally do a search is by clicking Mouse Button 3 (my scroll wheel button - but Command-Click can work too) on a result link and having that load in a new tab. I'll quickly scan through the links in a search result, sending the interesting looking sites off to a new tab, then flipping between the tabs when I've exhausted my search.

Because of this I don't use Snapback too much, but it has come in handy on occasion.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi David,

I am Mac OS X user but never noticed that, I like it.

In fact, you can mark page manually for Snapback too, and recall it anytime. For example, I imagine browsing the support discussion page of Apple, marking it for snapback (in menu, History > Mark Page for Snapback) following some category or topic links, and finally coming back to the main page (in menu, History > Page Snapback) and following other topics again. Seems to be very useful for online documentation too.

Thanks again for this really cool tip.
Anonymous said…
I imagine browsing the support discussion page of Apple, marking it for snapback (in menu, History > Mark Page for Snapback) following some category or topic links, and finally coming back to the main page (in menu, History > Page Snapback) and following other topics again. Seems to be very useful for online documentation too.

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