How to make Safari for Mac’s status bar more minimal and useful

Safari for Mac extension Minimal Status Bar screenshot 003

I like my browsers minimal. Safari for Mac admittedly boasts an aesthetically pleasing, clutter-free interface. But if there’s one thing I’ve always hated about Apple’s browsers, it’s that status bar at the bottom of the Safari window.

Though it conveniently lets you know where a URL will take you, once turned on it annoyingly just sits there whether you actually need it or not. I prefer Google’s approach better: Chrome’s status bar discreetly shows only when hovering over a URL.

Wouldn’t it be great if Safari had a similar only-on-hover status bar? That’s what Minimal Status Bar, a new browser extension by San Francisco-based developer Visnu Pitiyanuvath, does for you.

It works perfectly.

Once downloaded and activated in Safari, this extension adds a minimal, Chrome-like status bar to Safari. As an added bonus, it optionally converts those opaque short URLs to long ones again.

Here’s Safari’s regular, always-on status bar.

Safari for Mac extension Minimal Status Bar screenshot 004

And this is the new on-demand status bar provided by Minimal Status Bar. It only appears when hovering over a hyperlink and automatically disappears when you move the mouse pointer away.

Safari for Mac extension Minimal Status Bar screenshot 001

The extension is especially useful on Mac notebooks to reclaim UI space wasted by Safari’s persistent status bar, resulting in a bit taller canvas for web content.

How to install and set up Minimal Status Bar

Step 1: Download the free extension to your Mac from GitHub by clicking this URL.

Step 2: Open your Downloads folder (hit the ⎇-⌘-L combo in Finder) and double-click the downloaded extension (the file ends with .safariextz) to add it to Safari.

Step 3: Disable Safari’s real status bar by choosing Hide Status Bar in the View menu or pressing ⌘-/ on your keyboard.

You can manage installed Safari extensions by choosing Preferences… under the Safari menu and clicking the Extensions tab, as illustrated on the screenshot top of post.

There, you can disable Minimal Status Bar and optionally elect to have your shortened URLs expand on the fly, so it’s possible to tell where those pesky URLs will take you just by glancing at Safari’s status bar.

I learned about this gem of an extensions via a post on Useful Mac, a new website by Garrett Murray dedicated to nifty little programs that help customize your Mac “and generally just use the hell out of Macs and OS X.”

How do you like Minimal Status Bar?

Stumbled upon an even more useful Safari extension? Don’t be shy, share it with fellow readers down in the comment section or send us a tip at tips@iDownloadBlog.com.

Source: GitHub via Useful Mac