In Preferences I have Safari set to have New Windows Open with HOMEPAGE and New Tabs Open with HOMEPAGE. Homepage is www.yahoo.com Yet everytime I launch Safari it opens to the previously visited webpage instead of yahoo.com. How do I resolve this problem on my 10.11.3 Macbook Pro? I never had this infuriating issue on my Mavericks and Snow Leopard Macs. Applecare support could not offer effective advice, but just their usual robotic advice of "try upgrading to 10.11.5"
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Safari won't open to set homepage
- Thread starter kathyricks
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What happens when you open a new window or tab? Safari > File > New Window or Safari > File > New Tab? Do those new pages and tabs open to Yahoo? If they do, then that setting works as designed.
Those settings do not determine what Safari does when you open it, unless you closed all the windows and tabs before you quit Safari. Otherwise, Safari opens in the same state it had been in when you'd previously quit. If there's a page open to Wikipedia when you quit, then it'll re-open to Wikipedia. That Wikipedia window is not a "new window," it's an old window.
If you would like Safari to open "clean," close all the windows and tabs before you Quit, or hold the Shift key while you open Safari. That tells Safari to forget the "Saved State." Most people appreciate the convenience of apps opening in the same condition they were in when they last closed the app; especially after a crash or a restart.
Oh, and when you say "Applecare support could not offer effective advice," the only way you can know that the advice was not "effective" is if you took the advice and it failed to give you the desired result. If you ignored their advice, then you cannot judge whether or not it was effective.
Now, in this particular case, the advice probably would be ineffective, since what you've encountered is not a bug, but a feature. The feature hasn't changed between 10.11.3 and 10.11.5.
Those settings do not determine what Safari does when you open it, unless you closed all the windows and tabs before you quit Safari. Otherwise, Safari opens in the same state it had been in when you'd previously quit. If there's a page open to Wikipedia when you quit, then it'll re-open to Wikipedia. That Wikipedia window is not a "new window," it's an old window.
If you would like Safari to open "clean," close all the windows and tabs before you Quit, or hold the Shift key while you open Safari. That tells Safari to forget the "Saved State." Most people appreciate the convenience of apps opening in the same condition they were in when they last closed the app; especially after a crash or a restart.
Oh, and when you say "Applecare support could not offer effective advice," the only way you can know that the advice was not "effective" is if you took the advice and it failed to give you the desired result. If you ignored their advice, then you cannot judge whether or not it was effective.
Now, in this particular case, the advice probably would be ineffective, since what you've encountered is not a bug, but a feature. The feature hasn't changed between 10.11.3 and 10.11.5.
I'm on OS X 10.11.5. I quit Safari while having two tabs open - one tab was for this thread. Launching Safari, after quitting with two tabs open, resulted in it opening with a single empty tab. My setup seems to open to a "clean state" regardless of the state it was in when I last quit the app.
This appears to be an option:
Ah, good point, and the crux of the matter!
That option only appears in Safari > Preferences > General when System Preferences > General has "Close windows when quitting an app" is selected. I forgot about that one (since my preference is to not close windows).
So... OP... check System Preferences > General. If Close windows when quitting an app is not checked-off, you'll probably want to.
Ah, yes, I see what you mean. I didn't know that a system preference would dictate which Safari preferences are visible. Good to know.
In Mavericks and Snow Leopard it was not necessary to "close all the windows and tabs before you Quit, or hold the Shift key while you open Safari." Those are extra laborous, time consuming tasks. In Mavericks and Snow Leopard Safari would reliably open to the preselected homepage (yahoo.com in my case) no matter what procedure I used to close Safari during a previous session.
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Thank you...that solved the problem!