Visualize Your Safari History and Bookmarks with QuickLook

Yesterday I hinted at a cool trick in my Customizing Safari with SafariStand post. This isn’t entirely useful, but it’s still extremely slick.

SafariStand comes with a QuickLook plugin that enables you to visualize your web history and bookmarks with Safari (sorry Firefox users, couldn’t figure this out for you):

Getting this working is fairly simple:

• In the SafariStand zip is a file called HetimaWebThumbnail.qlgenerator
• Copy this file to /Library/QuickLook/
• Browse to /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/History/
• Enable QuickLook view (Command+4)

Be sure to replace <username> with your username.

Now you can visually skim through your history extremely quickly. I did notice not all pages show up, I assume this is because Safari caches things other than straight Web pages in its history.

You can also visually browse your bookmarks by navigating to /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/Bookmarks/

This isn’t completely useful, but it’s a nice visual representation of the sites you visit on a regular basis.

Update: Thanks Miki for pointing out a much, much easier way to do this. If you have SafariStand installed, go to History -> History Flow inside Safari.

I’ll leave this version up in case anybody wants this functionality without installing SafariStand.

Similar Posts:

• Customizing Safari with SafariStand
• Visualize Your Web History
• Exporting and Printing a List of Your Safari Bookmarks
• Expedite Opening a Group of Pages in Safari
• Show Status Bar in Safari

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Written by Brad Jasper on April 3, 2008 at 5:00 am - Visualize Your Safari History and Bookmarks with QuickLook has 4 comments - Categorized in Intermediate Tips, OS X Tips, Safari Tips

4 Responses to “Visualize Your Safari History and Bookmarks with QuickLook”

1. 
   Miki
   An even easier way to CoverFlow your history directly in Safari:
   SafariStand extends the History in the menubar with the entry „History Flow“ right below „Homepage“.
   A translucent window then overlays your Safari window and you can flip through your browsing history. April 3rd, 2008 at 5:51 am
   
   
2. 
   Brad Jasper
   Thanks Miki, I updated the post. Somehow that option jumped right over my head.
   
   I wondered why SafariStand was including a QuickLook plugin but not using it. :o April 3rd, 2008 at 8:13 am
   
   
3. 
   Michael
   This is a great hint!
   Can you help me? I downloaded the SafariStand zip file and I cannot locate the plugin. How do I find this file? Thank you. April 20th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
   
   
4. 
   Michael
   Please ignore my pervious post. I did find the plugin and copied it to the correct folder. I enabled quicklook, but all I see in quicklook is the safari icon for each website. Is there another step I may have missed that will show the image for each website? April 20th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
   
   

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