Show the Complete Web Address in Safari on Mac

You copy a link to send a colleague, and Safari's address bar just says "notion.so" — no page, no path, no way to be sure you're grabbing the right spot. Safari hides everything but the site name by default. Switch on the full website address and the bar shows the complete URL, so what you see is exactly what you copy.

Show the whole URL

The setting lives inside Safari and applies the moment you tick it:

1. In Safari, choose Safari → Settings from the menu bar, or press Cmd+,.
2. Open the Advanced tab.
3. Tick Show full website address.

The address bar now shows the full URL for every page — the domain plus the path and any query string after it. No relaunch needed, and the option sits in the same spot on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia. Untick it any time to go back to the short site name.

Copying and confirming the exact link

The point of the full address is trust: you can read what you're about to share before you share it.

• Copy it all: click once in the address bar to select the entire URL, then press Cmd+C. You'll copy the complete link — deep path, anchor, and query included — not just the homepage.
• Copy part of it: with the full address shown, you can double-click a path segment or drag to select just the piece you want, then copy that.
• Confirm before you send: a "share this exact page" link often carries a long path like /doc/2024-plan#budget. With the short site name, you couldn't tell a deep link from the homepage; now you can.

It's worth knowing that copying from the address bar always grabbed the full underlying URL, even when Safari only displayed the site name — the address was there, just hidden. What this setting changes is that you can finally see and check it, which matters when you're pasting a link into a message, a bug report, or a document where the wrong page would be embarrassing.

The Terminal key, and why Settings is better here

There is a matching preference, ShowFullURLInSmartSearchField, but Safari's settings are protected on current macOS: a defaults write only sticks if Terminal has Full Disk Access and Safari is quit first, and it can be overwritten otherwise. The Advanced checkbox above avoids all of that. If you already run Terminal with Full Disk Access, the command — with Safari closed — is:

# Quit Safari first; needs Full Disk Access
defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowFullURLInSmartSearchField -bool true

# Undo
defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowFullURLInSmartSearchField -bool false

For a one-time change, the Settings tick is simply the cleaner path.

Copy links and paths faster

If you copy addresses and file locations all day, the same instinct helps in Finder. See how to copy a file path on Mac for the keyboard trick that grabs a full path in one step.