When you finish your workday and completely quit the Safari browser on your Mac, you expect it to start fresh the next morning. However, depending on your macOS system settings, Safari might automatically resurrect and reload every single tab and window you were looking at the last time the application was open.
While this feature is intended to help you seamlessly resume your workflow, it can be a massive privacy and performance issue. If you were researching sensitive medical information or shopping for a surprise gift, having those tabs violently pop back onto the screen the moment you launch the browser in front of a coworker or spouse is less than ideal. Furthermore, forcing Safari to instantly reload dozens of heavy webpages will severely bottleneck your Mac’s memory on startup.
You can configure Safari to permanently forget your previous session, ensuring that every time you launch the browser, you are presented with a clean, blank slate.
How to Stop Safari from Restoring Previous Windows
You must change Safari’s specific launch behavior in its preferences.
- Launch the Safari browser on your Mac.
- In the top-left corner of the menu bar, click on the word Safari.
- Select Settings (or Preferences on older macOS versions) from the drop-down menu.
- Ensure you are on the General tab (the icon looks like a light switch).
- Look for the very first dropdown menu labeled Safari opens with.
- By default, it is likely set to “All windows from last session.” Click the dropdown menu and change it to A new window.
- (Optional) Immediately below that, ensure “New windows open with” is set to Start Page or Empty Page.
Safari will immediately respect this new rule. The next time you close the application (using Command+Q), all your tabs will be permanently destroyed. When you open it again, you will be greeted by a single, clean window.