Making bookmarks work in Safari 26

The Safari 26 update, changed how the Bookmarks menu works by default. I’m sure it’s based on the use case of most Safari users, and that most people simply a) don’t have a lot of bookmarks, or b) store them unstructured in their bookmarks menu. For both of those use cases, the new default view should work fine, either to find bookmarks visually by name, or by using the search field.

Personally, however, I’m a heavy user of bookmarks, at least for work purposes, and I’ve long been arranging them by category and subcategory. After the Safari 26 update, my logically arranged tree was a complete mess.

In the default view there are three usability issues:

• Actual bookmarks are a completely different size and format from folders.
• Folders and bookmarks are separated.
• The folder tree is invisible - you only see the folders and bookmarks that exist inside the specific folder where you currently are.

I have good news and bad news: The bad: I think this is unfixable in macOS 15, so if you’re stuck on that version, you’re probably SOL. The good: There’s a workaround in macOS 26.

There are two steps required to make the Bookmarks menu become readable again:

• Via the ellipsis menu, select Compact view to make bookmarks not stand out as a sore thumb.
• Via the ellipsis menu, un-select Show folders on top, to restore the tree view.

This doesn’t preclude the ability to search bookmarks, which is good, but it allows you to visually identify categories again even if you have more than a handful of bookmarks and more than one level of folders.