Safari 9 in OS X El Capitan: Little changes make a big difference

“Safari’s major overhaul occurred when Yosemite was released last year,” Roman Loyola reports for Macworld. “By comparison, the changes to Safari are just a few, but they will have an immediate effect on how you browse the web.”

“Safari tab mute,” Loyola reports. “This feature alone is worth upgrading to El Capitan. Whenever you’re in Safari, there’s a very good chance that you have multiple tabs open. And many websites auto-play media (yes, like Macworld), so you can end up with sound coming from a tab you aren’t currently looking at. The problem is trying to find which tab the sound is coming from so you can mute the audio.”

“In Safari 9, tabs with audio playing show a sound icon in the tab,” Loyola reports. “This makes it easy to spot where the audio is coming from, but Apple goes a bit further. Click the sound icon and it mutes that tab.”

Much more in the full article – recommendedhere.

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16 Comments

  1. “… auto-play media (yes, like Macworld)…”

    and why I stopped reading and going to the Macworld website LONG ago. I don’t visit sites that autoplay video or audio. When it happens I complain to them via their contact link informing them they’ve lost a viewer/reader. I delete the bookmark too. I do this to any website that does it. Their crap BLASTING over my music I have playing though speakers all the time. Arrogant websites.

    Oh and I have also contacted the advertiser products too – but not as much taking that time.

    Macworld I haven’t seen your site in probably 6-8 months.

    1. Ditto, justme12.
      Sheer arrogance on their part to hijack the viewing and listening experience on MY computer. But until they suffer a backlash because of it, they’ll keep doing it.

      Love the new feature coming in the new Safari. It’s been my go-to browser for a couple of years now. The only exception is when I hit a site that has Flash-only content that I want to see. I’ll copy the link into Chrome because it has Flash capability built-in. Watch the video, and then quit Chrome. Thankfully the need to do that is becoming very rare.
      RIP, Flash.

  2. Here’s a scenario. I’m at work and I’ve just finished a difficult task. I’m about to begin a new one. In between, I decide to glance at a web site. As soon as I do, there’s loud audio from an ad for Ford. That disrupts the whole place, it embarrasses me, and it reveals what I’m doing.

    I immediately close the tab, remove the bookmark, and never return to the site. That means I never see the ad. Haven’t advertisers thought about that?

  3. I uninstalled Flash yesterday and will try to live without it. I noticed a couple of sites that were playing video with Flash streamed using HTML 5 instead. Go figure. But that also stopped a bunch of sites from autoplaying ads.

    As for the others, I think justme12’s idea is a good one to inform websites and advertisers of the effects.

    1. I uninstalled Flash a while ago, but found that Chrome still has it installed (they apparently use a different installation folder). So, I use Safari for everything as usual – occasionally I need flash, so I copy the URL, paste it into Chrome. When I’m done, quit Chrome and go back to Safari. I have found I only need to do that about once per week since many things are shifting to html5. Websites track what is installed, so they’ll stop using flash if they see more and more browsers not having it installed.

  4. I’ve long been asking for this change. I usually have either iTunes or on-line radio running in the background while I do other things on my Mac. If I click on a web site with an auto-play video, it kills the audio stream that I’m choosing to listen to and substitutes something that I specifically don’t want to listen to. It’s a rude intrusion, rather like a drunken idiot who butts into an enjoyable conversation when you’re in a bar talking with somebody. Any advertiser who behaves in that way deserves the utmost contempt.

  5. Just uninstalled Flash from my MacBook Pro. Sites load faster. BUT – I also run Dr. Cleaner (it’s free too) from the Mac App Store and my memory usage now is very even. Just having Flash installed Dr. Cleaner, the memory would grow to all most 100% and Safari would slow. I clicked Dr. Cleaner to optimize memory and Safari would speed back up. With Flash uninstalled memory is a constant usage. Safari doesn’t slow down. WOW

    Safari is smooth and faster now. LOVE IT

    DUMP FLASH for a fast Safari.

  6. … Yeah but Apple still stupidly provides NO TITLE BAR in Safari, with a variety of thoroughly detrimental results.

    No kiddies, I won’t accept silly arguments to the contrary.

    At least Apple has followed my advice and provided space at the top of the new Safari windows where we mere humans can grab and drag the windows around our desktop. Here is my source article on the subject:

    No Safari Title Bar
    In OS X 10.10 Yosemite?!?!
    –> A Quick Workaround

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