I’ve been experimenting with Safari Extensions for awhile ( https://github.com/krypted/Word-Replacer-Safari-Extension ) and once we publish them we might need to continue to use an old version for testing. Extension updates can then be deleted by writing a boolean InstallExtensionUpdatesAutomatically key into the com.apple.Safari defaults domain and setting the option to false: defaults write com.apple.Safari InstallExtensionUpdatesAutomatically -bool false To remove the key and simply return to the default state: defaults delete com.apple.Safari InstallExtensionUpdatesAutomatically
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Notes On Google SafeBrowsing And Safari
Most phishing sites follow a known pattern. And people like to flag bad sites. So Google and a few other organizations, such as stopbadware.org have a collection of feeds that can be leveraged by software vendors to provide a warning or flat-out block potentially fraudulent sites. If a piece of malware is found, even if buried deep in a site, the site will likely get picked up by a robot or reported by a user. Robots can pick up a lot, as people who exploit WordPress sites and stuff like that are often after playing a numbers game. Harvesting hundreds of thousands or email address and sending phishing emails. It only…
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Hide Safari’s Bookmarks Bar
Safari has a bookmarks bar. Some people want to hide it. A lot of people used to do stuff like this by modifying the default user template in OS X. Not something we’ll be doing much in the future. So to do so with a script: defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowFavoritesBar -bool false To turn it back on: defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowFavoritesBar -bool true
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Enable Safari Status Bar Using Defaults
Nice and easy one today. By default, the Safari status bar is disabled at the bottom of a Safari screen. To enable: defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowStatusBar -boolean YES
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Change Your Default Search Engine Back on iOS
Recently, Safari on my iPhone started finding things I searched for using Yahoo! rather than the previously default Google search engine. Now, I’m not gonna’ hate on Yahoo! here. I actually left it for weeks so I could see the differences and nuances here and there. From the different way it displays movie times to image handling, I just didn’t exactly love Yahoo! (although it gets better all the time). So I decided to switch it back. If you decide to switch back, you do so by first opening the Settings App and then scrolling down to and tapping on Safari. From the list of available options, select Google,…
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Restricting Access To Sites On iOS Devices
One of the more common requests we get for iOS devices is to restrict what sites on the web that a device can access. This can be done in a number of ways. The best, in my experience, has been using a proxy. In Apple Configurator 1.2 there’s an option for a Global HTTP Proxy for Supervised devices. This allows you to have a proxy for HTTP traffic that is persistent across apps. Each Wi-Fi network that you push to devices also has the ability to have a proxy associated as well. This is supported by pretty much every MDM solution, with screens similar to the following, which is how…
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How To Gain About Half An Inch In Safari
No, this isn’t spam about some weird pump imported from Botswana (although if you need one, just let me know and I’ll grab some messages from my spam filter in Google Apps for ya’). Instead, we’re talking about getting rid of two icons in imaging that can recoup about a half an inch from the Safari bookmarks bar. I’m talking about the reading list and the top sites icons: To disable the reading glasses and the grid from here, use the defaults command and write an empty payload into the ProxiesInBookmarksBar key in com.apple.Safari, as follows: defaults write com.apple.Safari ProxiesInBookmarksBar '()' Or to just disable one of them, write the…
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Managing iOS Devices with Apple Configurator
My traditional interpretation of Apple’s vision on how iOS devices are used is that everyone has an AppleID. That AppleID enables them to access their apps from any iOS device they own or Mac that they own. That AppleID enables them to access mail, contacts, calendars and even files through iCloud. That AppleID also allows users to remotely wipe their device through Find iPhone and track their friends iOS devices (as in social networking via breadcrumb tracking) through Find Friends. All of this “Just Works” in a consumer sense. And it even allows for a little sharing of content across devices you own. However, larger organizations need more. They need…
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318 Open Sources mergeSafBookmarks
Originally Posted to the 318 TechJournal: 318 has open sourced our mergeSafBookmarks python script. This tool can read in a pair of property lists and merge them into a single resultant bookmarks file for Safari. This takes a lot of the work out of pushing bookmarks to existing users as part of your deployment. You can find it here: http://mergebookmarks.sourceforge.net Note: The script also looks at existing bookmarks and doesn’t merge in duplicates.
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Programmatically Changing the Mac OS X Browser
I am starting to get a lot questions on how to change the default browser for Mac OS X. I don’t know if it’s in preparation for summer imaging or if it’s because people clicked the button to reset their default browser to Chrome and then realized that, while fast, it just isn’t Safari. Either way, the default browser is stored in the com.apple.LaunchServices.plist, inside the LSHandlers array. Now, changing this with a defaults command would involve copying all the information into said command and then dumping it back in after changing all entries of com.apple.safari to the information for the browser you actually want to use. If you do…