Like all web browsers, Safari keeps track of the websites you’ve visited and when you went to them. This can be very helpful if you’re trying to track down websites you’ve been to but can’t seem to find again.

Clearing Safari History

Although seeing where you’ve been and what sites you’ve looked at can be helpful, it also takes away from some of your privacy. To clear your history you can select History from your menu bar and then click Clear History. Additionally, you can clear your Safari browsing history by selecting Safari on the menu bar and then clicking Reset Safari (This method also allows you to clear all personal data Safari may have stored on your system).

Restoring Safari History

If for some reason after you’ve cleared your Safari history you discover you can’t find a website you know you visited 3 weeks ago, Time Machine is there to help.

To Restore your Safari Browsing History:

1. Close Safari and Open Finder
2. Select your user account under Places (There will be a Home icon next to it)
3. Open the Library folder, and then Safari folder
4. Open Time Machine - Time Machine will open displaying the Safari folder in Safari you’ve navigated to
5. Select the date you’d like to restore your browsing history from
6. Select the History.plist file and click restore - A dialog box will open asking you if you want to proceed - Click REPLACE
7. Open Safari and click History on the menu bar

If the restore was successful, you should see today’s history plus the date you restored from below it. Navigate down to the Date and the history of sites you visited on that date will be displayed.

Exclude Safari History From Time Machine Backups

Now that we’ve showed how easy it is to restore your browsing history… you may want to keep that information as private as possible.

To keep Time Machine from backing up Safari History:

1. Command Click (right click) on Time Machine in the Dock and select Time Machine Preferences…
2. Click Options
3. Click the + button
4. Navigate to your User folder, Library, and then Safari
5. Select History.plist and click the Exclude Button (To keep everything in Safari Private, select the Safari Folder and click exclude)

This should add history.plist or all your Browsing personal information out of Time Machine backups. This, combined with Safari’s Private Browsing feature will allow you to browse the web without anyone being able to trace your steps.

OS X Leopard includes a wonderful backup tool, Time Machine, that allows anyone to quickly backup their entire system on an external hard drive or Time Capsule.

In addition to allowing individuals to backup and restore from their own system, Time Machine also allows you to “Browse Other Time Machine Disks”. This built in feature allows you to connect to any available Time Machine drive on your network and pull off any version of the file you’re looking for.

To Browse Other Time Machine Disks:

1. Be sure that you are connected to the Other Time Machine disk. To do this you may need to connect to the computer the drive is connected to and login with user credentials or mount the drive by connecting to the computer (command+K in Finder) with its IP address and mounting the drive.
2. After your computer has connected to the Other Time Machine disk, right click (command+click) the Time Machine icon in the dock
3. Select the Other Time Machine disk from the selection window and click Use Selected Disk

After following the steps above, Time Machine should launch and display contents of the backed up data on the Other Time Machine disk.

Browse through the files to find what you’re looking for, select those files, and then click restore. Time Machine will ask you where you’d like to restore the files to on your current computer. Select the location and let the file restoration begin.

Apple has just released an update to the Airport Utility and a firmware update to the Airport Extreme base station. This update to the AEBS will enable Time Machine to use disks attached to your base station. In order for this to work you must have the latest version of OS X (10.5.2 as of this writing). Once you update the Airport Utility on your mac, you’ll need to start up the Airport Utility. Depending on how you’ve configured your AEBS, it will notify you that there is new firmware to download and install or you may have to select “check for updates” from the Airport Utility menu.

Once the firmware is installed, you can then plug in your external USB drive to the base station, find your base station in the shared sidebar of finder, then open Time Machine Preferences and Select the drive and you’re done!

In fact, I’m backing up this mac to my AEBS right now. Sometimes it pays to be an early adopter.

PS Remember that you have to have a disk that is formatted (or partitioned) with Apple’s File System (HFS+).

Update

Nine and a half hour later, the first backup from Time Machine completed. My Macbook Pro is a first generation with 802.11g wireless. Your mileage my vary.