Four tips for Safari on OS X 10.10 Yosemite

Safari 8.0 brings a new flat look, speed and performance improvements under the hood for Yosemite, as well as a new feature I found myself using nonstop during the public beta.

Better tab management

To help you better manage open tabs in Safari, you can now view thumbnails for all open tabs by clicking on the new tab view button, located to the right of the address bar.

Each page currently open will have its own smaller version displayed within the browser window. If you have multiple pages from the same site open, they’ll be grouped together. You can quickly change between tabs by clicking on its preview icon, or close a tab by clicking on the X in the upper-left corner.

Just below the tab thumbnails you’ll find a list of open tabs on your other iCloud connected devices. The list makes it convenient to open or close a tab from another device on your Mac.

Sidebar shared links

The sidebar view remains in Safari, with the new ability to act as an RSS reader on your behalf. At any time when viewing a webpage, you can click on the Share button — also located to the right of the address bar — and select Add Website to Shared Links to subscribe to the site’s respective RSS feed. Keep in mind, the option to add the site to shared links will only be present when a valid RSS feed is found.

You can manage your subscriptions by clicking on the Subscriptions button at the bottom of the shared links column.

Better searching

When you begin typing a search term or URL in the address bar, you can press Enter to still perform a normal web search using your preferred search engine. Or you can click on one of a list of suggested sites, suggested Wikipedia pages, or an iTunes Store result directly below the address bar.

Favorites

You may notice your favorites are no longer displayed just below the address bar. To select a site from your favorites, simply click in the address bar.

Below the address bar, before you start typing anything, you’ll find thumbnails for your favorites. Click on the thumbnail to visit the site.

Never fear, however, you can bring them back by going to View > Show Favorites Bar.

Do you have a favorite feature in Safari on OS X Yosemite we didn’t include here? Be sure to share it in the comments below.