How to disable suggested search terms in Safari

Safari Smart Search Field lets you type in either an URL to visit or a search query to send to the default search engine. It’s also a place where search suggestions automatically pop up as you type. With this cool feature, you can type just the first few letters of a query and rely on the search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) to help you complete the search term without needing to type out the rest of your query. But, certain users may not be fond of this feature for privacy reasons.

If you’re among them, use the step-by-step instructions provided in this tutorial to turn off suggested search terms in Safari for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Google Suggestions while typing in Safari address bar

How to disable search engine suggestions in Safari

On iPhone or iPad

  1. Open Settings, scroll down and tap Safari.
  2. Turn off the switch for Search Engine Suggestions.
Turn off search engine suggestions in Safari

And that’s all. Now you won’t see search suggestions when you type your search query.

The left screenshot shows the search suggestions, and the right screenshot shows no search suggestions after following the above steps:

Safari Search Engine Suggestions on and off

If you ever change your mind and wish to get Google suggestions when you type in Safari, follow the above steps, and enable the switch for Search Engine Suggestions.

On Mac

  1. Launch Safari on your Mac and press together the Command + Comma (,) keys. You can also click the word Safari from the top menu bar and choose Settings or Preferences.
  2. Go to the Search tab.
  3. Untick the box for “Include search engine suggestions.”
Disable search engine suggestions on Mac

Doing so will exclude suggested search terms from popping up as you’re typing a query into Safari’s Smart Search Field.

Safari suggestions turned off on Mac

What happens after disabling search engine suggestions in Safari

Disabling this feature has two effects in Safari:

  • The browser will stop sending the search engine your partial search terms as you type them.
  • The search engine won’t send Safari search suggestions to show in the results list below the search and address field.

Useful related tips: