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Safari 14 and Big Sur:
The current Mac App Store version of StopTheMadness is fully compatible with Safari 14 and macOS 11 Big Sur.
Apple Silicon:
The current Mac App Store version of StopTheMadness is a Universal Binary. It runs natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.
Safari Technology Preview:
StopTheMadness is fully compatible with Safari Technology Preview. However, enabling StopTheMadness in Safari does not automatically enable it in Safari Technology Preview, so you'll need to enable StopTheMadness in Safari Technology Preview's Preferences.
How to Enable the Safari Extension:
See How to enable StopTheMadness in Safari for instructions on how to enable the extension in Safari.
If you're having trouble enabling the extension in Safari Preferences because the checkboxes don't respond to clicks, please see the Apple support document on this subject. For more details, see my article Safari bug: can't enable extensions on Catalina.
Privacy:
According to Safari's Preferences, StopTheMadness "Can read sensitive information from webpages, including passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards on all webpages" and "Can see when you visit all webpages". However, this is just boilerplate text from Apple shown for every Safari extension that can modify webpages. StopTheMadness does not read, use, or share your personal data. The privacy policy has more details about StopTheMadness privacy. See also my blog post The security of Safari extensions for a more detailed explanation of StopTheMadness permissions.
Refunds:
Apple can grant refunds for App Store purchases on request. App Store developers do not have the power to grant refunds, only Apple has that power. For instructions on how to request a refund, please see Apple's support article Request a refund for an App Store or iTunes Store purchase.
Website Options:
You can selectively enable and disable StopTheMadness features. Your custom options can be configured to apply to every web page or just to web sites that you specify. To change the options, open the StopTheMadness app in the Applications folder, and select the Website Options tab.
There are a number of protection features that you can enable and disable. By default, the "Recommended" features are enabled. These provide you with a high level of protection while also maximizing website compatibility. The features labeled "Use with caution" provide even higher levels of protection, but there may be more sites that don't work right when they're enabled, which is why they're disabled by default. Any and all of the features can be enabled or disabled as necessary or desired. Below is an explanation of each feature:
Navigator.sendBeacon
) from firing.utm_source
(Urchin Tracking Module), gclid
(Google Click ID), and fbclid
(Facebook Click ID) from the end of the URL when you click, drag, or open a contextual menu on a link.visibilitychange
events, which are part of the Page Visibility API. Using this API, websites can learn when a tab is visible on your screen and when the tab is hidden. When Tab closing and visibility is enabled, websites can't observe when you show or hide a tab or your screen.target="_blank"
to a link to make the link automatically open in a new tab when you click. If you prefer to open links in the current tab instead of a new tab, you can enable this feature, which removes target="_blank"
from links. When enabled, normal link clicks always open in the current tab. (You can still ⌘-click to open the link in a new tab.) When this feature is disabled, some links may automatically open in new tabs when clicked.stopthemadness-href
with the value of the URL of the page to the html
element of the page. You can use this attribute to write site-specific CSS in your Safari style sheet. You can set your .css
file as the style sheet in the Advanced tab of the Preferences window in Safari. (Note: If you edit your style sheet while Safari is open, you'll need to relaunch Safari for the changes to take effect.)textarea
elements) are also protected by the website options "⌘-key shortcuts", "Cut, copy, and paste", and "Text selection". By default, only single-line editors (HTML input
elements) are protected, because multi-line editors don't usually prevent copy and paste, and a lot of websites have special multi-line "rich text" editors with highly customized editing that can break with the textarea feature enabled. However, you may need to enable this feature on certain websites if they disable copy and paste.When you change the website options in StopTheMadness, those changes will apply the next time you load a web site in Safari. If you already have a web site open in Safari, and you want the changes to apply immediately to the web site, you need to reload the page in Safari.
How to Add Website Options:
(Watch the video tutorial on YouTube.)
The Default options for all websites apply to every web page in Safari, unless you have custom options for a particular site. To create custom options for a website, press the + button. There are two ways to specify websites: domain or URL. Examples of domains are "apple.com
" and "google.com
". If you specify a domain, then subdomains of that domain are automatically covered too. For example, "google.com
" also covers "www.google.com
", "mail.google.com
", etc. If you want a subdomain to have different options than its domain, create a separate item for the subdomain. The longest match always wins, so if you have items for both "google.com
" and "mail.google.com
", then your "mail.google.com
" options will apply when you load the page "https://mail.google.com/
". If you want options to apply only to subdomains but not to the domain, put a dot at the beginning: ".google.com
" applies to "https://www.google.com/
", etc., but not to "https://google.com/
".
You may want to apply custom options only to certain paths of a website, in which case you need to specify the website as a full URL. For example, if you enter "https://www.google.com/maps
", then the custom options will only apply to Google Maps and not to Google Search at "https://www.google.com/
". Subpaths are automatically covered too: "https://www.google.com/maps
" would also cover "https://www.google.com/maps/search/apple+park
". You can customize subpath options by creating a separate item for the subpath. As with domains, the longest match among URLs always wins. And a URL setting that includes a domain will override a domain setting for the same domain, since the URL is longer. So "https://www.google.com/maps
" takes precedence over "www.google.com
".
URL Scheme Rules and Web URL Rules:
See URL Scheme Rules and Web URL Rules for a detailed explanation of these tabs in the StopTheMadness window.
Migrate Safari Extension Settings to a New Mac:
To migrate your custom Safari extension settings to a new Mac, you can export them to a file on one Mac and then import the file on the other Mac. The Export and Import commands are in the main menu of StopTheMadness:
The exported Safari extension settings include your Website Options, URL Scheme Rules, and Web URL Rules. The Website Options from other browsers, such as Firefox and Google Chrome, are not included.
Known Website Compatibility Issues:
In these cases you may want to create custom website options and disable the specific feature.
SmugMug (smugmug.com
): Disable "Drag and drop" and "Privacy" to fix reordering photos.
Scrolling: icloud.com
, smartsheet.com
Show video controls: Hulu, Netflix, nfl.com
Airtable (airtable.com
): Disable "⌘-key shortcuts" to fix ⌘C and ⌘V for cells.
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