How to Pin Sites in Safari and Mac OS

Use pinned sites for fast access to the pages you visit most often

By
Tom Nelson
Tom Nelson
Writer

Tom Nelson is an engineer, programmer, network manager, and computer network and systems designer who has written for Other World Computing,and others. Tom is also president of Coyote Moon, Inc., a Macintosh and Windows consulting firm.

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Updated on December 20, 2021

What to Know

  • Launch Safari. If you don't see the tab bar, go to the View menu and choose Show Tab Bar.
  • Go to a favorite website. Right-click or Control+click the tab bar. Select Pin Tab.
  • To remove a pinned website, Control+click the pin and select Unpin Tab > Close Tab.

This article explains how to pin websites in Safari and macOS and how to remove a pinned website from the tab bar. This information applies to macOS 10.11 and Safari 9 and later.

How to Pin a Website in Safari

OS X El Capitan introduced several Safari improvements, including the ability to pin your favorite websites. This puts the site's icon in the top left section of the tab bar, allowing you to pull it up with just a click. Websites you pin in Safari are live; the page refreshes continuously in the background.

Site pinning only works on the tab bar. Follow these steps to make it visible and pin a website to it:

  1. Launch Safari.

  2. If you don't see the tab bar, go to the View menu and select Show Tab Bar.

    Safari on a Mac with the Show Tab Bar option under the View menu highlighted

  3. Navigate to one of your favorite websites.

  4. Right-click or control-click the tab bar, and select Pin Tab from the pop-up menu that appears.

    The option menu for a tab in Safari with Pin Tab highlighted

    You can also pin a website by dragging its tab to the left side of the tab bar and dropping it into place.

  5. Safari adds the current website to the pinned list at the far-left edge of the tab bar. If the site has an icon, this symbol appears on the tab.

    A pinned tab in Safari

  6. To return to the pinned site at any time, click its pin icon.

How to Remove Pinned Web Sites From Safari

Here's how to remove a pinned website from the tab bar.

  1. Control-click the pin for the site you wish to remove.

  2. Select the Unpin Tab option from the pop-up menu.

    Options menu for a pin in Safari with Unpin Tab highlighted

    Alternatively, you can drag the pinned tab to the right side of the tab bar or go to Window > Unpin tab.

  3. To remove the tab and close the page, click Close Tab.

Beyond the Basics of Pinned Web Sites

Pinned tabs are a part of Safari and not the current window. When you open additional Safari windows, each one has the same group of pinned sites ready for you to access.

Pins are very useful if you visit many websites with content that continually changes. Useful applications for pinned tabs include web-based mail services and social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

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