Mail & Safari
Hide your address for privacy, and browse in tab heaven
Mail may not have had much of an overhaul, but is steadily recovering important features which were lost when it was rewritten, and gains welcome improvements in privacy. Safari’s intended redesign nearly became a disaster, but Tab Groups are magic for many users.
1 Bookmarks to tabs
You can now organise your long list of Bookmarks into Tab Groups, according to subject. Step through each Bookmark you want to add to a given Tab Group, opening each in a new tab. Once you’re happy that you’ve got all of them open, and in the correct order, select the ‘New Tab Group with [n] Tabs’ command from the New Tab Group button at the top right of the sidebar to add them to a new Tab Group, and give it an appropriate name.
2 Change Tab Groups
To add the current page to an existing Tab Group, ≈-click in its tab, select the ‘Move to Tab Group’ command and choose which group to add it to. Within a Tab Group, the same contextual menu lets you close (remove), duplicate or move that tab to another group, as well as enabling you to choose the order in which tabs are shown there. Empty Tab Groups display your Start Page.
3 On your tab
Make as many Tab Groups as you like, as their impact is small. When you open Safari, it doesn’t automatically load all the pages in your Tab Groups, but waits until you start browsing them. Even then, Safari only stores the pages which you’ve browsed. If you have a dozen pages in one group but only open one of them, that’s the only page of that group which is kept in memory.
4 Memory fresh
Pages within Tab Groups that you’ve opened during that session in Safari are kept in memory until you quit the browser. This ensures they’re updated quickly when you switch back to them, but when memory’s getting tight they can be a burden. Safari should manage that automatically, by wiping the data for you when necessary, and you can always clear it by quitting Safari and opening it again.
5 Don’t open downloads
Before browsing with any new version of Safari, first open its preferences, select General, and uncheck the box at the foot, to open ‘safe’ files after downloading them. As those files include Zip archives which could contain malware, or specially crafted malicious documents, you should only open them when you’re happy that they’re safe. Automatically opening them is widely condemned as dangerous by security experts, so it really is important to check them first.
6 Block the invisible
It’s common practice for commercial email messages to contain hidden pixels which are loaded from a remote site, enabling it to gather information such as whether you opened the message, and your IP address. Apple’s Mail app can now block those attempts when you enable Mail Privacy Protection in the Privacy tool of the app’s preferences. This opens those pixels in the background, passing the data through proxy servers which prevent all personal information from leaking out.
7 Keep your email private
Hide My Email generates a dummy email account which hides your real address, and forwards all incoming messages to your real account. Use it to prevent websites which require your email address from knowing your real email details. If its customer database is then stolen or sold on, you can simply delete the dummy address and use a different one without having to change your real address. You can also use it for normal email in which you want to keep your real address private.