How to run Greasemonkey scripts in Safari
November 14th, 2007 by Ross McKillop |
Print This Post
If you’re a die-hard Safari user, you may want to check out one of Firefox’s best features - Greasemonkey. Using the free software SIMBL and GreaseKit, you can run most of the scripts created for Greasemonkey - in Safari. And Mailplane. And all WebKit apps. So now you can use the genius that is Folders4Gmail while using Safari.
- First up - download SIMBL and install it (installation consists of clicking ‘next’ a bunch of times).
- Exit Safari if you’re using it.
- Next, download GreaseKit. To install it, drag the GreaseKit.bundle file to ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins
note: if you don’t have a SIMBL/Plugins/ folder, just create it, then drop GreaseKit.bundle into it.
- Now re-open Safari. You should see a GreaseKit entry in the Safari menu bar.
- Head on over to http://userscripts.org and find a Greasemonkey script to try out. Again, I’ll recommend Folders4Gmail. When you find one you want to install, click the Install this script button.
- You’ll see a bunch of javascript fill up your browser window, and a Safari dialog box will appear asking you to confirm the installation. Click Install.
- Your GreaseKit menu will now include the installed script.
- Check to make sure the script works in Safari by actually using it. In this case, I installed Folders4Gmail, and it works exactly as it should. Note: I installed 5 random Greasemonkey scripts using GreaseKit and all of them worked perfectly - if you find one that doesn’t, please feel free to leave a comment here.






















22 Responses to “How to run Greasemonkey scripts in Safari”
By Blaze on Nov 16, 2007 | Reply
I tried installing Colorful List View for Google Reader and Google Reader title unread count, and neither worked..
By Aseem Kishore on Nov 26, 2007 | Reply
I’ve also written a list of really useful Greasemonkey scripts that you can check out here:
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/25-useful-greasemonkey-scripts-you-should-take-a-look-at/
Enjoy!
By Clif Rogers on Nov 29, 2007 | Reply
I tried to insatll Facebook Auto-Colorizer and It didnt work.
By Nino on Dec 6, 2007 | Reply
To Install GreaseKit, I had drag to ~/Library/InputManagers/SIMBL.
By JH on Jan 11, 2008 | Reply
I can’t seem to get this to work on Safari 3.0.4 while using Tiger.
Could you please offer any insight? Thanks!
By downloads on Apr 3, 2008 | Reply
clicking the “install this script” button put the script into my downloads folder, so I dragged the .js file back into safari and it asked to install.
By Ross McKillop on Apr 3, 2008 | Reply
@downloads:
Thanks for the tip! It might have something to do w/ the new version of Safari (I didn’t have to do that when I installed, but that was a few versions ago). Thanks again!
By PeterVk on May 11, 2008 | Reply
Does anyone know a decent resource for learning to write GreaseKit scripts? Or a how-to to port Greasemonkey scripts for GreaseKit?