Big Sur Safari - Massive Forehead

[RobbieTT]

Admittedly only an issue on smaller screens but the massive vertical space taken by the Safari Toolbar on Big Sur is a waste of precious screen space. Together with the favourites bar, plus any tabs, I am loosing over an inch of vertical space out of the 8" or so of viewing height:

Anyone found a way of reducing the size of the Safari toolbar, either via settings or a tweak tool?

👨‍🦲

 

[Xanderhoff]

I agree, this is quite unfortunate

 

[RobbieTT]

I didn't even notice it on my iMP but now I have Big Sur (BS?) on my 13" MBP it just screams at me. I cannot un-see it now, not even on the 27" of the iMP.

I cannot see a reason why the toolbar is not the same height as the layer(s) immediately below it. Perhaps the devs at Apple don't find themselves dipping down to a mere 13" display.

 

[dannys1]

 

[Brookzy]

First thing I noticed too.

 

[RobbieTT]

@dannys1 A closet Lexus driver perchance?

 

[Biscotti]

Also with Safari, and please someone back me up here - As big as the forehead is for the bar, the draggable area for the safari window is extremely SMALL!

Attaching picture of what I believe to be the only draggable areas, but if you get too close to an icon, you won't hit the drag ability. I actually really dislike this.

 

[drxcm]

Yes, unfortunate.

 

[coffeeplease]

I had the same initial thoughts too during the betas. I've already forgotten about it but you'll probably get used to the new forehead.

 

[FHoff]

Never paid any attention to it.

 

[Blowback]

Admittedly only an issue on smaller screens but the massive vertical space taken by the Safari Toolbar on Big Sur is a waste of precious screen space. Together with the favourites bar, plus any tabs, I am loosing over an inch of vertical space out of the 8" or so of viewing height:

View attachment 1664062

Anyone found a way of reducing the size of the Safari toolbar, either via settings or a tweak tool?

👨‍🦲

I'm with you on this...noticed it also.

 

[nmeed]

I was mumbling about this earlier. All their developers must be on 27in iMacs because there’s no way they’d do this if they’re on a 13in MBP.

 

[nt5672]

I was mumbling about this earlier. All their developers must be on 27in iMacs because there’s no way they’d do this if they’re on a 13in MBP.

Can't imagine doing any serious development on a 13 in anything. Using dual 27 inch here and it is sill too small.

 

[Nebulance]

I certainly agree about the forehead on Safari. Really jarring. For what it's worth, I notice this on a lot of apps -- Notes, even the Finder. I'm also a bit bugged out by the slightly smaller text size in the Menu Bar.

I have a 13" MacBook Pro (mid 2014). Big Sur is running well on it. I prefer the small size for travel and what not, but when I'm home, I'm connected to 27" and 25" displays; I can't work any way else now!

Work bought me a nice 16" late 2019 MacBook Pro (1 TB, 32 GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 5300M) which is great screen-size wise. Maybe after a week of seeing how Big Sur is on my non-work laptop, I'll move the work one over.

 

[dannys1]

Also with Safari, and please someone back me up here - As big as the forehead is for the bar, the draggable area for the safari window is extremely SMALL!

Attaching picture of what I believe to be the only draggable areas, but if you get too close to an icon, you won't hit the drag ability. I actually really dislike this.

I *think* I know what you're talking about, but you can put a spacer on the right there to push the icons far right like they used to be.

the biggest new issue for me is that the last tab no longer has a new tab button that I used to press all the time.

 

[RobbieTT]

the biggest new issue for me is that the last tab no longer has a new tab button that I used to press all the time.

I've move some of the buttons and spaces to make it a little bit more like the Catalina version but yes, I thought the previous placement of the tab '+' button at the end of the last tab was more intuitive:

Times change I guess.

 

[RobbieTT]

Currently working with this toolbar layout, seems to keep the cursor moving to a minimum whilst giving suitable clear space to work with:

Still not completely at ease with the layout though.

 

[RobbieTT]

From Apple; not sure how making something bigger makes it look more streamlined:

By default, toolbars are taller.... The increased height and bezel-free controls combine to give macOS 11 toolbars a streamlined appearance.

The relevant Apple Dev page:

So it looks like this is a 'feature' that is working 'as designed'.

Grump-mode on; learning-to-live-with-it caption flickering.

 

[nmeed]

I've move some of the buttons and spaces to make it a little bit more like the Catalina version but yes, I thought the previous placement of the tab '+' button at the end of the last tab was more intuitive:

View attachment 1666099

Times change I guess.

Oh wow, look how thin it is. They really took a step backward, especially with the placement of the new tab button.

 

[LongWayHome]

Yeah definitely not ideal. Leaning more and more on firefox these days....