Safari iCloud tabs

Tech Support
1

Hi everyone

What do you do when you have opened a ton of tabs in Safari and the Mac slows down and the fans spin up?

I tend to use Safari as a todo list almost where I open tabs to help remind me to check them out. I still haven’t found a faster or better system for that. But it slows down. Anyone have any ideas for a better system to remember to check out links?

I could of course open some tabs through iCloud on my iPhone instead. But I find that Safari iCloud tabs doesn’t always work… anyone know of a solution to that?

Thanks!

2

I have the same problem with iCloud tabs. For some reason my MBP tabs don’t sync to any other device. The usual fixes (eg log out of iCloud and log back in) don’t help. Sorry, I have no solution for this one yet.

As far as the tabs thing, what I did was write an AppleScript to collect the titles and urls of all open Safari tabs. It can be connected to a keystroke using Alfred or Keyboard Maestro.

Using this, I can collect all of the tabs and then drop that info into a TextEdit document. I can then reopen those pages as I have time to review them.

It would be easy enough to modify the script to output the list in html as a file that safari can then open so you can just click through the links, or,to create an Apple Note with the links or,whatever.

Maybe that approach would work for you?

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3

Install more memory?

4

You can create a bookmark folder for all open tabs. Delete the folder when done.

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5

Brett Terpstra has a couple of projects you may find useful, also:

  1. Tablinks copies the link information for every tab open in Safari, and outputs them as a list.

  2. Share all your browser tabs at once is an Automator workflow that will collect all the tabs that are open in the front window of your browser. Links are placed into a web page and a Dropbox public URL will be placed on your clipboard for sharing. You can then put that URL into your task manager of choice.

hope this helps,
Fran

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6

Thanks! Tablinks was just what I was looking for. Ill check it out

7

So I’m still working on this. Does anyone know of a workflow or Siri Shortcut that will take open tabs in Safari and save them all to Instapaper?

8

Hi everyone

I have moved off the Mac and am now using an iPad Pro exclusively. But my habit of using Safari as something of a todo list has not changed.

I have accumulated 255 open tabs over the past 6 weeks. The intention is to go through them all at some point. But does anyone have an idea of maybe how to export those tabs with links to somewhere else?

9

This won’t help your near-term problem, but I highly recommend you stop using that method. You’ve already pointed out the negatives. Instead of opening tabs for later, instead “open” that link in Instapaper, Pocket, or Reading list. That is to say, send the links there, then process them when you are ready.

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10

I already have about 700 articles in Instapaper

11

Well good luck! I can’t imagine trying to get through 900+ items. Hope you find a solution to help you dig out.

12

I recommend creating a Siri Shortcut that takes the URL and URL name, and inputs it into a JSON file, this way you can use this JSON file in another shortcut (or same, with a menu) which let’s you choose which URL to open by browsing the URL name, later on

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13

Thanks Tonny. It sure what all that means but it sounds good :blush:

14

Have you done any curation of all the links you are gathering. It feels like you ar building a monster. (Sorry my comment has nothing to do with your question.)

Last time I did a review of the literature paper with hundreds of initial possibilities I built and Access data base. I beleve I had 25+ fields such as duration of study, peer reviewed, number of participants, blind, double blind and so forth. I also included an abstracts. My it was fun doing different sorts and large sections of the paper wrote it self.

I got copies of the original papers up front (if not on line) to do the winnowing for inclusion. I had to wonderful libraries supporting my effort.

Again this my have little to do with your project and was based in a Windows world. a long ago and far away fond memory

15

I’ll try and do a basic Shortcut tonight - you can give it a go and see if that might be of use to you :slight_smile:

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16

Oh how cool! Thanks Tonny.

17

I’ve cooked up this little nifty shortcut.
It’ll create an iCloud sub-folder of the Shortcuts folder called
“Save URL for later”

Within this folder each saved URL generates a .txt file with the name of the webpage, and the URL inside this .txt file.

When you run this shortcut from the Safari share sheet you can either:

  • Save the current webpage for later
  • Open a previously saved webpage
  • Open several previously saved webpages (shortcut will tell you how to do this properly)
  • Remove previously saved webpages (.txt files are deleted from sub-folders in iCloud)

If you only want to open one webpage the shortcut can also be run from the app/Homescreen - I do recommend running it from the Safari share sheet, though, in case you want to open several URLs.

Hope this is of use to you :slight_smile:

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18

Hi Tonny that is amazing.

Some issues though. See the video

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0qY1_-0aF0O3Qy9TQIohSn6sA

19

That’s odd - somehow the actions has been shuffled around to other menu options, after I shared the link🤔

I’ll test, revise and test again tonight :grin:

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20

Seems like there’s a problem creating a shortcut on iOS 12 and sharing it from the public iPadOS 12 beta.

This time It’s shared from iOS 12 and confirmed working as intended :slight_smile:

Save URL for later

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