Using Command-F in Safari to find search terms on a page is pretty much the most helpful thing in Web browsing since—well, since ever, really. It’s the kind of very basic trick that, if you show it to your technologically impaired uncle, he’ll practically explode with glee about the magic of it all and the wizardry that you embody. But did you know that Safari makes finding things even easier than using that keyboard shortcut? Let’s check it out.
So first, type whatever you want to look for in Safari’s search bar. (I’m resisting the urge here to call it “Safari’s Google search bar” mainly out of respect for the seven of you who are using Bing as your default instead.)
Then click on a link from your search results to bring up a page. After you do so, Safari will have helpfully stored your search term. It won’t tell you that it did, but believe me, it’s there. If you hit Command-F at this point, you can verify that whatever you wanted to find is already populated in your “find on page” field.
OK, why is that so awesome? It’s because after you’ve searched for something on the Web, you don’t even need Command-F at all, thanks to the joy of Safari’s Find Next and Find Previous commands.
So let me paint you the full picture. You do your Web search in Safari. You click on a link to open a page. Instead of messing around, you immediately hit Command-G, and Safari pops you right to the first result on the page. Hit Shift-Command-G instead, and you’ll be taken to the last result on the page. As each result is found, it’ll be highlighted in yellow briefly and then fade to grey all nice-like.
You can continue tapping either shortcut to cycle through all of the times your word appears, and you’ll quickly have whatever piece of information you’re looking for. Techno-happiness, commence!
Techno-depressingly, though, I have a couple of caveats for you. First, Safari will only auto-find the first word you searched for. So if you Google “Ocarina of Time,” the term that’ll be used when you hit Command-G is “ocarina,” not the full phrase. Which is kind of a bummer.
That is, unless you’re clever enough to realize that putting the phrase in quotes makes Safari see the whole thing as a single search. Hooray for easy solutions!
Your second (albeit very minor) caveat is that this won’t work if you use the search bar on Google’s page (or any other) instead of Safari’s built-in one.
Nope, this won’t do the same thing at all.
I suppose you can see how doing searches this way is much faster than trying to use Command-F and having to type stuff in all of the time. And that’s how you make finding things on a page as easy as falling off a log. Which, from what I hear, is pretty easy. Never tried it myself, but I have fallen off of some other things. Do wagons count?