One of the new things that macOS Big Sur brought back then concerns your browser. While this can help us locate ourselves quickly, some users may find it annoying Safari tab preview, to the point of wanting to deactivate them. For this, we have prepared this tutorial.
First step, activate the use of the Terminal from the Preferences
Unlike many macOS tweaks, this requires a few steps that make the process a bit more complicated. To be able to turn off thumbnails in Safari tabs, we will need to enable full terminal access. To do so, follow these steps:
- Open System Preferences on your Mac and go to Security & Privacy.
- Tap the padlock and enter your password (or use your Apple Watch to authenticate as an administrator).
- On the left side, select “Full disk access”.
- Add Terminal among the allowed applications.
To finish, press the lock again and close preferences. What you just did is give the Terminal app permission to have full access to Mac disk, be able to manage higher actions. Now you can go to the second step to continue with the tutorial.
How to turn off Safari tab preview
With Terminal and its new authorizations, you are ready to disable tab previews from Safari. Follow these prompts to complete the process:
- Close Safari, but not before opening this article in another browser or on another device. So you can follow the instructions comfortably.
- Press cmd + spacebar and type Terminal to find and open this app. You can use any other way to find and open this app.
- Copy this text and paste it in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugDisableTabHoverPreview 1
- Hit enter and open Safari again.
Now the thumbnails of the tabs they should have disappeared. If you want to return these previews, open Terminal again and type this:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugDisableTabHoverPreview 0
When you have them the way you want, don’t forget to go to System Preferences> Security & Privacy and remove Terminal from the list we’ve seen. So you’re gonna leave everything as before.
These thumbnail tabs can be useful for some users. They are used to position yourself quickly if you have any of them and you haven’t organized them. However, those of us who almost always work with them may find them boring. Fortunately, this trick helps us remove this option.
