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On Mac OS Lion, apps seem to persist their state across launches. Generally, this is a good thing. However, I seem to have run into a problem.

In Safari, I must have typed quickly and hit enter after entering the letter W. Now, whenever I open Safari, it opens a window and immediately tries to reach http://w/, which is obviously not accessible. Not that it makes much of a difference, but I'd like to remove this persistence.

http://w/ Dubya, huh?

How can I remove the last opened window from Safari, so that it doesn't show this window on every launch?

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  • Safari only discards the history when you quit the app - not when you launch the app.
    – bmike ♦
    Aug 21, 2011 at 22:23
  • I've cleared history, to no avail. Whenever I open Safari, I see the screenshot posted above. How can I stop seeing "w"s?
    – Moshe
    Aug 21, 2011 at 22:25
  • If you have already Quit and Discard Windows - then it would be likely that w is now your default window shown as a chosen start page. @nathan has an answer for you on that avenue.
    – bmike ♦
    Aug 21, 2011 at 22:31

2 Answers 2

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As far as I know, there is not currently a way to tell an app to never remember its state.

You can, however, control this on an individual quit basis. That should be enough for you to get Safari to forget http://w/. Here's how:

Go to the Safari menu. Hold down the option key. You'll see Quit Safari change to Quit and Discard Windows. Click this item.

Now, reopen Safari. It should go straight to your homepage instead of to the page that was open when you quit.

If that doesn't work, it is possible that you've somehow set http://w/ to be your homepage. To change this, go to Safari-> Preferences-> General.

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  • It was the homepage. Silly me!
    – Moshe
    Aug 21, 2011 at 22:32
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Have you tried holding the shift key when launching Safari?

Just as holding shift when booting makes it load less (Safe Boot) and holding shift while you log in won't start the apps that normally start, the same reasoning here makes safari not re-open the windows it normally would.

It's really not that useful in practice. If you have some odd sites up when you quit Safari - of course you could remember to hold option down when you are quitting Safari.

This changes Quit Safari into Quit and Discard Windows - but it's not as easy to discard the windows when safari isn't actually running. (Kind of like you can go in and edit the bookmarks when Safari is closed, but most people do it while the program is running)

I'm not good enough to remember things the next time I start Safari - so I just close it and move on...

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