22 ms·

When you type realty.com into Safari it takes you to realtor.com

1039 points by shiftpgdn 6y ago

yeskia 6y ago
Just tried this on my iPhone, took me to Realty.com but not before being forced through a CAPTCHA page. It’s not an excuse, but I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
- kmutahar 6y ago
  The CAPTCHA is part of the site and has nothing to do with the domain. The CAPTCHA is provided by Cloudflare and it’s up to the customer to chose to show it before access to the site since it can decrease spam and hug of deaths
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Wow suddenly I have a great deal more sympathy for Safari's behavior. When a site is that hostile to visitors, steering them away is almost a value-added service.
igammarays 6y ago
Probably because he has Realtor.com in his history. I didn't, so Realty.com worked for me.
- jameshawkins 6y ago
  I don't think I have either Realty.com or Realtor.com in my history and I was able to reproduce. In the video, it looks like he tries it on a few devices at the Apple Store, which likely have little history.
- minkzilla 6y ago
  I have never been to either site and was able to reproduce what the post says.
- pbreit 6y ago
  Still wrong behavior. There's no way a standalone domain name should go elsewhere.
- rcthompson 6y ago
  Did you watch the video? He tried it on a bunch of demo phones in an Apple Store and they all did the redirect.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  I didn't have either... if i typed "realty.com", safari tried to autocomplete with a second 'm' in com (realty.comm), and then took me to realtor.com when i hit "go" (even though the 'first suggestion' said 'realty.com' If I hit space after 'realty.com', it would try a google search... but if i hit space and then delete the space, it would send me to realty.com Super confusing... this is on iOS 13.3.1
jm1234567890 6y ago
I can’t reproduce this on my iPhone
jameshawkins 6y ago
I just tried this on Safari on my phone - I was sent to Realtor.com as well. I tried it a few times and was redirected each time, even though I typed "realty.com" in the URL bar (and it didn't auto-correct before I hit "Go").
- pbreit 6y ago
  Me, too. Absolutely should not happen. Will give the benefit of the doubt that it's a glitch. Still unacceptable, certainly for a .com.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Wow. I'd be livid if I were this guy. That's an expensive domain. Even if it's in the history, the browser shouldn't be guessing at what to do when it gets exact instructions.
- kace91 6y ago
  It doesn’t work for me. I wonder if it’s location related? I’m in spain if it makes any difference.
  - CGamesPlay 6y ago
    Is your phone in English? That seems more likely to be related.
    - 542458 6y ago
      My phone is in English, but I didn’t get the redirect. I’m in Canada.
      - lutoma 6y ago
        Didn't happen for me either in Germany (despite English iOS). May be US-specific?
  - kevinschumacher 6y ago
saagarjha 6y ago
This has been driving me mad for the better part of a year: the autocomplete behavior in Safari is totally broken. Last year it started picking words from your query and going through your history and using that to autocomplete so you'd always go to some random thing from your history that's barely relevant even for the most generic search terms (if I type "ptrace" I want to go to a web search, not some random Stack Overflow question I clicked on two years ago that happened to have "ptrace" in its title). Now it's randomly loading other websites I have never been to when I type search terms (I searched "sketch" the other day and it took me to "sketchers.com"). It's WWDC week, so FB7333211 for the first one and another incoming once I can reproduce this reliably. Please fix your stuff, Apple. Oh, while I'm here: trying to escape out of the autocomplete suggestion is also awful, it's some sort of combination of ⎋ and ⌫ and the arrow keys until you can get the thing to not show up in the bar, and then you have to look very closely to make sure that it's not going to send you to the Top Hit anyways.
- throwanem 6y ago
  HTH: The quickest way I know to dismiss suggestions in favor of a search is to hit Space after whatever intended search term is matching a suggestion.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    This used to work! But now it doesn't because it's doing page title match, and the title of course is something like "ptrace returning EINVAL" and now your space still makes it match…
- searchableguy 6y ago
  Why would you have history of what you searched 2 years ago? I automatically clear my history every day. It sounds like a privacy issue when someone gets your phone.
  - ryanianian 6y ago
    I never clear my history. Nothing is more satisfying than being nerd-swiped by an article and seeing it already visited.
martin-adams 6y ago
This doesn't do it for me in the UK, but I did wonder if there was a spelling auto correction happening between the Go and it hitting the address bar. Looks like a bug nonetheless.
hn_check 6y ago
I would assume the store devices (Best Buy) are locked to a small set of domains for obvious reasons. Further it seems that it's adding an extra m on the end on all but the first. EDIT: LOL, -10 on this post. This place is such a swamp of imbeciles. Again, this is 100% a DNS issue, and note that the majority do not have this. Verizon or some other specific provider is blocking what they see, incorrectly, as typosquatting. Guy tried zero Android devices in comparison. Probably because he knew all of the "HRURR EVIL APPLE MAKING MONEY REDIRECTING" sloths would run with it.
- unreal37 6y ago
  I would assume you're being downvoted for making an incorrect assumption.
  - hn_check 6y ago
    Downvotes on HN have little correlation with correctness. Idiocy reigns supreme here just like every other site. I will restate the assumption that Best Buy's network is filtered. Of course it is. It would be absolutely idiotic to assume otherwise. Further many DNS services have typosquatting protection where if they see an uncommon domain mirroring a "legitimate" (e.g. more common) one it blocks it or forwards you. Is this why this demo does this? Who knows. A remarkable number of people seem to not have this problem. My iPad - nope. My iPhone - nope. So what now? Clearly it is not systemic, however much a small assortment of angry trolls demand it be.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  It happens on my iPhone... and I actually also get the extra 'm' when i type the 'realty.com'
00deadbeef 6y ago
I ended up at realty.com on iOS 13
- asdf21 6y ago
  Realty.com on a iPhone XR
013a 6y ago
Cannot replicate on the iOS 14 beta. While I get a suggestion for realtor.com, typing realty.com and hitting go takes me to realty.com.
- jdeibele 6y ago
  I can't replicate on the iOS beta or the MacOS beta for realty.com. For "sketch" - first result Safari shows is sketchup.google.com but it shows Skechers.com as a choice. BTW, been super pleased with the betas so far.
gruez 6y ago
Can't replicate it on ios 13.5.1. Then again I also have a bunch of safari features turned off (eg. suggestions, preloading) so it could be that.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  He mentions in the post that turning suggestions off fixes it.
donohoe 6y ago
Hard to read on Mobile page. Here is non-mobile link: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157161487396994&id=501751993 https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157161487396...
- llacb47 6y ago
  Yep, URL should be changed
  - andybak 6y ago
    Not so fast. The altered link requires a login to Facebook. The original actually shows partial content.
    - dang 6y ago
      Hmm, I'm not seeing that.
- dang 6y ago
  Ok, changed from https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157161487396994&id=501751993 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1015716148739699....
heavymark 6y ago
File a bug report on https://webkit.org/reporting-bugs/ https://webkit.org/reporting-bugs/. Unlike the apple bug reporter where it goes into an abyss and might be years before a resolution or even a reply, with the webkit reporting system I usually get a response from apple employees very quickly and majority of the items fixed in the next release or two.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Sadly I think this is specifically a Safari bug, so it pretty much has to go into Feedback Assistant. (I figure if you file a bug for WebKit they'll tell you to go report it there anyways.)
- pier25 6y ago
  That has _not_ been my experience when reporting bugs to webkit. I've reported a couple of bugs that are still there, years after I reported them. See this one for example reported in 2016: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162512 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162512 Or this other one from 6 months ago and still no response from the team: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207049 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207049
- VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
  No way. I've reported several iOS Safari bugs to the webkit tracker and all of them were marked confirmed and not a single one has been fixed. In the last 3 years. Apple is in way over its head trying to build/maintain a web browser on mobile and desktop.
- om2 6y ago
  This in particular is a Safari bug, not WebKit, so not ideal to file there. If anyone files a case of this with sysdiagnose and screen recording and posts the FB# here, I will make sure it gets looked at.
grimmdude 6y ago
Same happens for me, realty.com -> realtor.com. However, explicitly typing https://realty.com https://realty.com works fine. iOS 13.5.1
baggy_trough 6y ago
What drives me mad is typing queries that have a space. Most of the time it'll do the intended search, but sometimes it'll try to go directly to the domain with the space which immediately fails.
- partdavid 6y ago
  Personally I hate conflating the URL entry space with the search query space. Which is why I was so disappointed that Firefox removed my ability to separate them recently.
  - SubiculumCode 6y ago
    I keep Firefox up to date on my Windows box (version 77.0.1) and I still have the ability to have a dedicated search box. Are you on a pre-release channel?
    - partdavid 6y ago
      You have the ability to have a dedicated search box, but your URL bar is also a search box, and you can't turn it off. I want to enter URLs in a box which doesn't try to autocomplete as a search, doesn't search my search engine, doesn't try to fill in missing TLDs, etc. I had something close before 75.0, which introduced the "revamped" address bar that is also swollen. I separated the search box not because I want a search box (I really don't want a browser with a "search box" at all) but because I want un-interpreted, un-looked-up URLs. Though the current URL box doesn't seem to actually search implicitly, it's really hard to tell if its suggestions are coming from the search engine or not and it's at least a step back in the wrong direction). I'd love any suggestions for making the URL box dumber.
      - jwitthuhn 6y ago
        This is still possible in Firefox 77 if I am understanding correctly. The magic entries in about:config are keyword.enabled - Turning this off will make firefox never search for something you type in the address bar. browser.fixup.alternate.enabled - Turning this off will make firefox never try to "fix" the url you type in by putting .com on the end of it.
josefresco 6y ago
I was redirected to realtor.com - iPhone 11 iOS 13.4.1
yqsk 6y ago
Replicated on my iPhone
xt00 6y ago
hopefully apple doesn't just whitelist realty.com to forward to realtor.com.. They should actually send you to the qualified URL if you type in a .com or whatever.. like who these days types http:// http:// or https:// https:// ? In chrome for example it hides the http or https now..
codezero 6y ago
There’s a pretty simple explanation, and I think the behavior is almost certainly a bug or a UX edge case they overlooked. The entry in safari is acting only as a search box it seems, and Go takes you to the first result that is finds - which is the first result on Google, likely a paid ad, or just coincidentally a higher ranking. If you visit the realty.com site directly (Not suggesting this is a workaround, see thread), then type it in, Safari remembers it and gives it higher priority. This seems to be a quirk of a “first visit” UX - it still is meaningful to anyone who has competitors with similar names, and I’d call it a bug to not check the domain first, though assuming good intent, maybe it does, but something about that domain is not right for some heuristic (HSTS, something else?)
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >If you visit the realty.com site directly How? He literally types "realty.com" (ie: the full domain) in the bar and it goes to "realtor.com."
  - codezero 6y ago
    That’s what I thought I explained. If you look at the list of items that appear below his typing, the “Top Hit” is “realtor.com” - I am saying that this is reading the typing as a search, and not as a domain. It’s a bug imo that the domain isn’t considered first. I think it came across as if I’m saying this is correct behavior, I’m not, I’m saying it’s following the UX available, it’s not a nefarious trick to redirect to a competitor. It’s still damaging and needs to be fixed.
    - ianferrel 6y ago
      I don't think people are misreading your post as approving of the bug. What people are responding to is your suggestion of a workaround: "If you visit the realty.com site directly..." And the question is: How do you visit the site directly if typing the domain name into the url field doesn't take you there. Your workaround either doesn't work or needs more explanation.
xrisk 6y ago
Heads up: this seems to be a mobile Safari bug only; I can’t reproduce it on macOS.
- geuis 6y ago
  I was just able to replicate it in Safari 13.1.1 on Catalina
wincy 6y ago
My wife's new iPhone SE 2020 does the same thing. My iPhone 6 Plus on iOS 12.4 correctly goes to realty.com
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Does your phone have private browsing turned on and hers have it turned off?
ljcus10 6y ago
Does anyone believe that Apple is making money off this?
ljcus10 6y ago
Does anybody believe Apple is making money off this? Redirecting websites to competitors.
- samirelanduk 6y ago
  Probably not tbh - the cost/benefit of getting such small amounts of money versus enormous reputational damage is not remotely worth it.
  - ljcus10 6y ago
    My question is can they bid on it behind the scenes like a keyword. Siri suggestions must have some type of revenue.
    - prawn 6y ago
      It would be a poorly considered algorithm rather than some bidding situation. No sane person would build this intentionally. The big companies have too much to lose especially.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        Basically, this is Google's entire business: getting paid to send us where someone else wants us to go. Google are "big". Why wouldn't Apple want in on this action?
        Carpetsmoker 6y ago
        Sponsored search results are marked as such in the Google results, it's nothing like the automagic redirect Safari is showing here.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      Apple uses this to promote first party services like Apple Music, Apple News, and App Store. All of these generate revenue for Apple. If they land on Google, then Google would be promoting YouTube Music, Google News, etc, which is lost revenue for Apple.
SigmundA 6y ago
Want another fun Safari auto complete bug? Have a tab open that is changing its title on an interval. Try to type something in any tabs address bar and use the arrow or a mouse to try and pick a result, the focus will constant jump and reset to the beginning every time the title changes on any tab, making it nearly impossible to pick a result if its changing fast enough. The auto complete list seems to be populated with web page titles in real time and the list is being modified causing the results to be rerendered. I found this after trying to use a Super Micro IPMI that updates the title with the current FPS on every frame, had it in a background tab and couldn't get to a search result, oh the frustration and time that cost me to actually track down. Reported it to Apple of course nothing.
- geuis 6y ago
  Yup was able to replicate that with setInterval(() => document.title = `${Math.random()}`, 1000)
- crenwick 6y ago
  This behavior sends me to undesired pages on a daily basis. Thank you for finally telling me what causes it! It essentially makes basic keyboard shortcuts useless on safari.
- emmelaich 6y ago
  Holy sh!&*@#!t thank you. I had similar behaviour with a different remote BMC thing.
- spiderfarmer 6y ago
  So that's how this happens. I always thought it had something to do with sticky arrow keys or something.
  - Darkphibre 6y ago
    Reminds me of an issue on Windows I just figured out. My keyboard input kept getting yanked to the other PC. For some reason, my mouse cursor moves back and forth when I use the arrow keys. Been happening for a while, but whatever. Magic Mouse (KBM emulator) at some point got configured so that holding ctrl-shift-mousemove would snap the mouse to the PC in that direction. Sooo, Ctrl-Shift-Left (highlight previous word, something I would do frequently [like just now to highlight and italicize 'frequently']) would end up also moving the mouse left a few pixels... which would send the mouse and keyboard over to the other PC. Took me a few weeks to track that one down.
trav4225 6y ago
This is pretty typical of most software these days: user-hostile and painfully dumbed down. Browsers especially seem to be able to get away with this because there are practically no non-annoying alternatives that are sufficiently secure and compatible.
rjeli 6y ago
Alright, while we’re talking about iOS autocomplete - I have a question. I noticed that sometimes when I’m typing an out-of-dictionary word, sometimes the keyboard will actually type the key next to the key I tapped that would type a real word. I imagine they’ve put a lot of effort into making the touch keyboard accurate, so is this a feature to that end or, more likely, is it a Baader-Meinhof thing, that I only notice when it happens?
- smitop 6y ago
  This is probably the keyboard adjusting the tap area of the keys based on the predicted likelyhood of that key being pressed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=wPmVKyhyl9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=wPmVKyhyl9U
  - rjeli 6y ago
    Wow, I never would have been able to google that. Thanks for confirming I'm not crazy.
- nbardy 6y ago
  I just moved to android and this bugs the shit out of me. It’s definitely real. I had to retype a character once by using the side of the key farthest from the one it was touch jacking.
- vultour 6y ago
  I always felt like I was the only one that experienced this. Even worse, I think sometimes it highlights the character you actually want, but once you release your finger it inserts something else. It happens very rarely but I remember I had to retype a character 5 or 6 times at one point, thinking I was going mad.
graeme 6y ago
Already fixed? Can’t replicate on ipad pro ios 13
- ljcus10 6y ago
  Not fixed it just does not happen on every device but it even happens on MacBooks and iMacs
analog31 6y ago
I wonder what it does in other localities. Is "realtor" even a word, outside of the US?
- pesfandiar 6y ago
  FWIW, it's a trademark and very much protected in Canada too.
classics2 6y ago
Wow. And these are all on high value searches. Somebody is taking money here, no way this is an autocomplete error.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ilaksh 6y ago
This is another reason people should not buy Apple.
phs318u 6y ago
I've just tried this on both macOS and iOS. macOS 10.15.5 Safari 13.1.1 Tested 4 configurations: Search engine: DDG vs Google Wipr adblock extension on/off. In all four cases: Typed in realty.com and hit enter - got realty.com. Typed in sketch and hit enter - got search results for the word sketch. Tested exact same configurations (DDG/Google, Wipr on/off) on my phone. iOS 13.5.1 on iPhone XR Same results as above. I'm just not seeing the behaviour that's being described here. Perhaps its a geo thing? I'm in Australia. I assume most people here are in the US?
- Karupan 6y ago
  I see the same behaviour down under. I wonder if Siri has got anything to do with it? Mine is always disabled.
  - phs318u 6y ago
    I've got Siri enabled. It's odd. EDITED: Sorry, I just realised, I'm not sure if you meant you're seeing the same behaviour as me, or as everyone else.
    - Karupan 6y ago
      I meant I see the same behaviour as you :-) Can open those URLs just fine without any redirection.
rad_gruchalski 6y ago
Not seeing this in Germany. iOS 13.5.1.
AndrewKemendo 6y ago
I just replicated this on my iPhone 11 iOS 13 on Safari. Northeastern US, home WIFI connection. Does not replicate on Chrome or Firefox on the same phone
breatheoften 6y ago
Url editing on iphone safari is highly messed up experience ... the text selection and editing behavior is just broken since ios 12 or 11 -- whichever one introduced the new text selection model ... My standard easy repro -- go to a long url and try to edit the second to last segment of the url path (something which i do for work frequently when folks send me links to projects under development). Enjoy the frustration.
- eclipxe 6y ago
  Works fine for me. I just long press on the keyboard to get into cursor edit mode and swipe along until I get to where I want.
  - ajzinsbwbs 6y ago
    Nice, thanks! Now that you remind me I’m sure I’ve seen that move before, but forgot about it and have been frustrated when editing urls every day since. I think this is the worst thing about using an iPhone for me and probably a lot of other users. Here is the full incantation to get it to work: 1. Touch the address bar and the keyboard will appear. 2. Long press on the spacebar (other parts of the keyboard won’t do it) until a cursor appears in the address bar. 3. Without lifting your finger after the long press, start dragging your finger left and right. The cursor will move. Maybe writing that out will help me remember. If only there was some affordance in the ui indicating this common use is supported.
    - breatheoften 6y ago
      This is better than what I've been doing ... But I find the experience of the cursor navigation by long-press on keyboard quite odd still ... if you stay in the mode for awhile -- and try sliding back and forth its quite an odd experience as it feels like the algorithm behind the cursor motion and its relationship to scrolling becomes less clear over time rather than more understood ... Maybe there is something wrong with my touchscreen ... I can't figure out how to get the soft keyboard to scroll the cursor position reliably past the viewable area -- sometimes it does scroll and sometimes it doesn't and its a bit of a mystery to me what the intended motion input into the device is that will meet my desires ... seems like maybe the panning speed needs to be proportional to the fingers vertical height in the keyboard or something -- no panning up top, and fast panning below
cglong 6y ago
I received my new American Express and, when trying to enter the URL on the sticker, Safari suggested a phishing site as the "top result". I tried reporting this to both Apple and AMEX but never received a response :(
- hirsin 6y ago
  Maybe worth semi weaponizing it? Make your own phishing page that gets into this list (easier said than done) and as soon as they click the sign in button (pre credential entry) splash a page explaining that Apple is busted?
  - willcipriano 6y ago
    Go for the gold, make the result for apple a blog post about how apples suggestions are terrible
  - vmception 6y ago
    no way make it a Tim Cook crypto giveaway with a continuous livestream of a video of him talking about technology, and a countdown why should you have to only shell out money for some petty bs, if you randomly find a gold mining claim you go excavate the gold.
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    If it was open source you could fix it yourself, sounds easier.
moon2 6y ago
Weird, my iPhone is in English, but I live in Brazil, and couldn’t reproduce it (iOS 13.5.1). However, a bit unrelated, Siri suggested a website whose title is “Home - Donuts” when I was typing news.ycombinator. And the link for it is just “news”
fortran77 6y ago
This is truly outrageous. Why would Apple want to destroy this man's business?
suyash 6y ago
I tried on mobile safari and it went to reality.com - bug didn't reproduce for me
- emmelaich 6y ago
  reality or realty?
  - suyash 6y ago
    oh my bad, just tried realty and it worked too as it went to realty.com
- mod 6y ago
  Seems like typing realty.com and getting sent to reality.com is bad, too.
egypturnash 6y ago
I just typed realty.com into OSX Safari 13.1.1 and got the proper site. Then when I picked up my iPhone (ios 13.5) and started to do the same test it autocompleted 'real' into 'realty.com'. On the OSX side, the 'search' pane of settings has Safar Suggestions and Quick Website Search on, has preload top hit and show favorites off, and has DDG as the search. On IOS I have DDG as the search, and have Search Engine Suggestions, Safari Suggestions, and Quick Website Search on, and Preload Top Hit off. And have Frequently Visited Sites off. It is worth mentioning that OSX Safari offered 'realtor.com' as a 'Top Hit' suggestion below the address bar, which I could have chosen with a quick downarrow, return, but at no point did it try to fill in autocomplete for me. I almost wonder if this is happening to the owner of realty.com because they have spent a lot of time looking at realtor.com while building a site that competes with it, and Safari now thinks this is a site they really love to go to. — EDIT. Oh no I missed the part where there are videos of this being done on demo iPhones at the Apple store. Crazy! And not good.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Yup, similar -- I've never visited either in my life prior, but on macOS it goes to realty.com, but I am shocked that on iOS I type in "realty.com" and it doesn't autocorrect, but lists "realtor.com" as the top suggestion below, but when I hit enter it goes to realtor.com instead of realty.com! That is seriously bad functionality. I've already been annoyed at iOS's keyboard overly autocorrecting, but to change a URL I typed in explicitly really pisses me off.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    I'm curious, did yours also have the extra m (realty.comm)? Both the 2nd and 3rd phone the video shows has the extra m, which makes me think it's an actual bug in the autocomplete, where it has completed to "realtor.com" (notice realtor has one more letter than realty), but you actually don't see it (except the last letter, the extra m at the end). So when you press enter, it goes to realtor. If you do get the extra m, can you play around and see what happens if you delete the extra m at the end? Does it go to realtor.co? realty.com?
surround 6y ago
Why doesn’t it give you any indication that it’s going to “correct” your query before you hit enter? This has been bugging me lately.
markstos 6y ago
In Jira if you type an autocomplete @name too fast it will show the right person selected in a list but autocomplete the wrong result.
potatoman111 6y ago
This is wild though... full domain entered and directs to a competitor? Is Apple getting kick backs? Wonder what small businesses are crippled by this?
recursive 6y ago
Killer service idea for apple users: RealUrlBar.io You type in a url into a textbox, and then it gives you a hyperlink to that site.
awinder 6y ago
There’s a cottage industry of these terms apparently, I have “slickdeals.com” autocompleting when typing “sl” and it forwards to a google “snow leopard” search. Maddening.
nodamage 6y ago
I've run into a similar problem on the Mac version of Safari for a while now: I'll paste in a full (http:// http:// or https:// https://) URL and hit Enter, but instead of loading the requested URL it just reloads the current page. I sometimes have to paste it a couple times before it will actually load the URL I want. Anyone else encountered this or am I just going crazy?
- scarlac 6y ago
  You are not crazy. There is a bug in the last 2 minor releases of Safari where you can type in or paste a link and it'll just end up reloading the same page. You can do this several times. It drives me mad, quite honestly. But it is indeed a bug. No idea why. I doubt it's related to this suggestion feature.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I've seen this too, but never figured out why it's doing this. If the underlying bug is some sort of timing related thing, then it might be related?
- scottjg 6y ago
  i was hoping someone would bring this up. it happens to me all the time.
  - bichonnages 6y ago
    Me too!
- toxik 6y ago
  Ah so I’m not going crazy. These things are just... the type of bug that indicates a deeper issue in the code. Poor software engineering decisions, and many of them. Mobile Safari had a bug for a year where the zoom function would get stuck somehow, breaking rendering completely. I wonder how that happened too.
- doersino 6y ago
  This infuriates me every single day, and it also happens when just editing the URL of the current page. Typing a space at the end of the URL and waiting a second before hitting enter seems to circumvent this issue.
wrkronmiller 6y ago
I just tried this on desktop Safari 14.0 and I went to realty.com without a problem.
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
money money money. MONEY
gotoeleven 6y ago
The best feature of safari is "Remove from dock"
40four 6y ago
I tested on my iPhone and it does not have this behavior. It went to the correct site on Safari & on Firefox. Why is he demonstrating on random phones in an Apple store? That’s not really a good example of a ‘clean’, out of the box device. A ton of people have tinkered with those phones. Isn’t it possible that some other people typed ‘realtor.com’ in all those phones in the past? Either way it you type a specific, valid URL, it should never be overridden with an autocomplete.
wasnthere 6y ago
It works correctly if you add a space after realty.com Tested on iPhone, Safari, iOS 13.5.1
- recursive 6y ago
  I don't have an iphone, but what would correct behavior actually be for "realty.com "?
natch 6y ago
Was able to reproduce this with Safari on an iPhone with search engine (should be irrelevant though) set to Duckduckgo. After a couple repeated failures (where it went to realtor.com) I tried typing in http://realty.com http://realty.com (I forgot to use https fwiw) then it visited the real site realty.com and again went to that same real correct site on every subsequent attempt using just the bare string realty.com —- of course that’s too much to ask of users, nor would anyone have a chance to ask them.
dhosek 6y ago
Safari's latest version has added some asynchronous coding that has impact behavior of the browser in negative ways. If you type the first part of a URL and there are multiple options so you use down arrow to get to the one that you want, a lot of times, the list is still being populated and Safari will jump the cursor back up to the top of the list. I think this is part of that same bad coding.
Gertig 6y ago
Just the word "realty" (and "realty.com") sends me to "realtor.com"
d0100 6y ago
Couldn't this lead to a nice settlement for this guy? Or would "it's a bug" be an acceptable defense for Apple?
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Apple and this website have no business relationship, so there’s no breech of contract. Beyond that, Apple‘s duty of care is really very low. If Google can take money to sent people to a website that otherwise would rank below yours, Apple certainly isn’t liable for doing the same without intention.
- jpttsn 6y ago
  It baffles me how many commenters here and on Facebook just assume this is somehow illegal. I‘m not saying I know the US Code by heart or anything, but lacking the basic intuition for what the laws of the land are must be a terrible disadvantage.
jeffmcmahan 6y ago
Replicated on iOS 12.3.1 iPhone SE
VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
Safari is the absolute worst web browser by far. Both mobile and desktop. This kind of egregious error is only the most obvious part. Try doing a WebRTC conference call in Safari. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, Jitsi Meet, etc, etc, etc. None of them support Safari. Do you know why? It's because Safari is absolutely riddled with bugs: [1][2][3]. It is incredible how bad Safari is. [1] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211181 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211181 [2] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212669 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212669 [3] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212780 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212780
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  I once tried to watch a video sped up in Safari, and the sound was awful. An acquaintance tried to report the bug to Apple years ago, and it went into a black hole. Compare to the public bug trackers for Firefox and Chromium, and it's easy to understand why Safari remains nearly useless.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    WebKit has a public bug tracker.
    - VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
      Apple Safari (mobile and desktop) doesn't use the WebKit.org bug tracker. They do their own thing.
      - shuckles 6y ago
        Video playback is a WebKit feature.
        lern_too_spel 6y ago
        The platform audio libraries that Webkit uses on MacOS and iOS are not part of Webkit.
nixpulvis 6y ago
And people wonder why I've been begging for the ability to set my own default browser in iOS for so long... So many people defend Apple's walled garden, and then they do things like this, be it on purpose or by accident. What a mess.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  TIL you can't set your own default browser on iOS.
  - dpacmittal 6y ago
    Until 2 days back. With iOS 14 you can now choose default browser and mail client
ncmncm 6y ago
Will this be enough to make you swear off ever buying another Apple product? If not, they have no reason to fix it. You will get used to it, soon enough, and like every other offense, it will soon seem unremarkable. The battered wife doesn't leave him because, she says, "I can still stand it."
deleted 6y ago
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cromka 6y ago
What really drives me mad is that there is no public bugreporting for any Apple soft, except for the betas obviously. Only then we'd be able to have an idea of the sheer extent of bugginess of their products, and how the heavily advertised features never work. I hope someone with energy and time actually creates and maintains an open, alternative bugzilla for that purpose specifically.
- djrogers 6y ago
  > What really drives me mad is that there is no public bugreporting for any Apple soft, except for the betas obviously. Second google result for ‘report apple bug’ : https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
  - sb8244 6y ago
    I think that the intent of parent is to have the bugs be publicly visible, like https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=status:open https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=status:open
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    That's even more of a black hole than Feedback Assistant.
jolmg 6y ago
> Seems not that legal > That seems incredibly illegal. Why would it be illegal? I understand that it's unfair, but what law would be broken here?
dec0dedab0de 6y ago
I always hated having search in the address bar, And hidding the full url. Its gotten even worse with all the screwy tlds.
djrogers 6y ago
Odd, totally not happening for me - and I’m a frequent realtor.com user. I type in realty.com and it takes me to the correct website.
the_other 6y ago
All of these take me to DDG search results on my iPhone X. - reality - reality.com - sketch I tried with “Search Engine Suggestions” on and off, with the same results. I couldn’t test with “Safari Suggestions”. The switch was disabled. I assume this is due to having Siri disabled.
alister 6y ago
Trying to reproduce this Apple bug reminded me of another annoyance in the UI. I went to enable Safari Suggestions on my iPad, but it wouldn’t let me. The button remained greyed out. It turns out that I need enable Show Siri Suggestions in App before I can enable Safari Suggestions. Buy why? They seem unrelated. If you stick to the defaults in the Settings menu, everything is fine, but if you change them you get exposed to inscrutable dependencies among the settings. I imagine there is an explosion of complexity that isn’t easily tested.
deleted 6y ago
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rapnie 6y ago
Tangential. I find it annoying that Firefox hardcoded a whole bunch of URL's in their search bar history. I have 'Provide suggestions' off (privacy), yet it suggests me walmart.com, facebook.com, americanexpress.com, etcetera.. all sites that I have zero interest for. I guess they must be there, because they earn some money from it?
w33n1s 6y ago
I typed tits.com and it went to boobs.net
gvpmahesh 6y ago
Realty.com owner can technically sue the Apple and settle for a million dollars at least
rawoke083600 6y ago
As an android user who has an apple-only-girlfriend... I'm always amazed at how exceptionally terrible autocomplete is on her iPhone, and how much better the Android counterpart is. Lol the complete absolute nonsense the iPhone of hers will predict is crazy for a premium phone from the worlds most valuable company. Not hating (I love their hardware - not software) just wondering why is it so bad on Apple ? Is there like a setting she must switch on like "Planet Earth English" ?
- easygenes 6y ago
  Maybe she’s the problem? It “learns” as you go based on your habits, so she probably just writes very differently from you.
  - rawoke083600 6y ago
    I was thinking that ! Surely it must uses your like past history right ? Is there something she should turn on ?
noodlesUK 6y ago
I think this is symptomatic of the really overzealous approach that Apple has towards autocomplete and autocorrect these days. The autocorrect has a nasty habit of replacing my correct sentences containing absolutely normal non-technical vocabulary with annoyingly incorrect garbage. It routinely replaces “well” with “we’ll” when it makes absolutely no sense to do so, and generally adds apostrophes all over the place. Not to mention the way it handles names. Sometimes I want my name to not be capitalised, such as in my email address. Even pressing backspace, then typing the same thing in again after it autocorrects incorrectly doesn’t solve anything.
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  I just prefer to disable autocorrect.
beshrkayali 6y ago
Safari lost it when it stopped showing full url in address bar.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Firefox, all working hard to take away the Web's usefulness, feature by feature.
- bsmith0 6y ago
  Really? That's a very cynical outlook.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    Indeed it is, and I am not a cynical person. I tend to attribute incompetence over malice, and I am not even sure that malice is actually at play here. But the reality is that with every release of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, piece by piece, the Web's most important behaviors and features, the things which make it so awesome, are being removed.
HenryBemis 6y ago
I only made it halfway through the comments. I like my machines to NOT do the thinking for me and allow me to make my shortcuts. One of the things I appreciateon my (default) phone setup (Android, Honor 8x, Firefox, DDG) is that when I type on the browser's URL/search the autocorrect is OFF. When I type in the DDF search form the autocorrect is ON. I find this super logical (I keep suggestions off)
mcintyre1994 6y ago
Not getting this in the UK. I’m guessing their suggestions are location specific maybe? Though I don’t recall ever seen Safari do this myself.
callamdelaney 6y ago
Have you tried typing 'form/multipart' into your firefox url bar? I expect a google search - what I get is a redirect to `https://form.com/multipart` https://form.com/multipart` - what?!
- jeroenhd 6y ago
  Firefox does that to fix quickly typed domains if they're not found by DNS (it appends .com and tries to load that). It's probably because form/multipart is nearly a functional URL (where "form" is the hostname, which could very well be resolved in corporate networks or through a hosts file, for example). If you want to be sure you're executing a search, either use a keyword for Google or start your query with a question mark. A quick way to execute a search is to hit control+k, which puts focus to the URL bar and prepopulates it with "? " so that whatever you type after it is executed as a search. I actually dislike it when Firefox does the opposite for websites like pi.hole or fritz.box. The domain does resolve, but you get redirected to a search page regardless and Firefox put a suggestion to navigate to what you typed. My address bar is not a Google search form, it's an address bar that happens to search on Google when I type something that's not a web address.
piyush_soni 6y ago
Don't have an Apple device right now, but if I go to BrowserStack.com (just created a free account there) and try it on a 'real cloud iPhone 11 Pro' (yeah, whatever that means) I cannot reproduce it. But then they don't allow you to go and check if the suggestions are turned on or off so not sure.
fastball 6y ago
I feel like when Brave's similar behavior was posted on HN a week or so ago, the company itself was getting a lot more hate for what I think is a less egregious behavior. Why the discrepancy?
jkulubya 6y ago
Safari autocomplete on macOS is such a mess. Ever since I switched to DuckDuckGo, I have to give it about two seconds between when I type a word and when I can arrow down into the suggested pages and click enter. Otherwise, when the suggested results from DDG come back the arrow position is reset and I end up tapping enter to go to the wrong page. Didn’t have this issue with google search or chrome.
joshjdr 6y ago
I turned off the options in Settings > Siri & Search > Safari and now “s k e t c h return” goes to google not skechers.com!
sbr464 6y ago
Went to realty.com on first test. Catalina 10.15.4, Safari 13.1
boredatworkme 6y ago
I just tried it on my iphone and I don't see this behavior. I have this option of "pre-load top hit" disabled. I understand not a lot of users will have this disabled and is probably what is causing this issue. Therefore, this is more of an issue with the aggressive suggestions engine for websites that a testament to how poor Safari as a browser is (which is what many comments here seem to suggest).
chadlavi 6y ago
Can't reproduce on iPhone X in the beta of iOS 14. Though I've also never had this sort of thing happen to me generally. Safari always either does a search for what I typed it goes to the exact address I entered.
bad_user 6y ago
On that same note Apple's auto-correction really sucks. On my iPhone I replaced the keyboard with SwiftKey b/c I kept making embarrassing mistakes with the default keyboard.
nsonha 6y ago
The whole idea of recommendation systems is based on the assumption that you're gonna keep doing the samething over. Its accuracy is depending on whether you are a person of habbits or constantly changing. While in some aspects having a pattern is good (work or routine life tasks), in many others it's an indication of something unhealthy or not optimal. You don't want to be that person that seems to have a limited vocab and just keep using the same phares. You also most likely dont want to keep buying the same stuff or reading just that one particular genre/author/news outlet. Autocomplete particularly never worked to me and I'm happy that I cant seem to be typecasted by a machine. As a software developer, I wonder what the people who made these engines think. Are they actually happy that their code makes people more predictable?
sli 6y ago
I've noticed that Safari on iOS autocompletes so aggressively that if you go to a full URL on a site (e.g. https://example.com/somesection/page.html https://example.com/somesection/page.html) you can pretty much no longer type just "example.com" into the address bar. It will pretty damn aggressively autofill in the URL to the page you visited earlier. Maybe it was a bug in an earlier version that's been fixed, I don't do a whole lot of browsing on my phone. But that was (or still is) easily the most obnoxious browser bug in my recent memory.
parliament32 6y ago
Omnibars and browsers "guessing what you want" in general is pretty trash. I'm having an issue with the Firefox one: If I type a word, like "resolv" into the omnibar, it gives me the option to "search with google". Great. But if I type in "resolv.conf", it by default wants to "visit" (thinking .conf. is a tld)... but it doesn't even show me the option to "search with google" in the dropdown! I've literally had to resort to typing "google resolv.conf" which is a super gross way of going about it. I don't know if combining search and URLs in one box was ever a good idea. I feel I preferred the dual-box layout, where you had a URL bar on the left and a search bar on the right.
Daub 6y ago
The broken Spotlight search of OSX was one reason I moved to Windows. Day after day of this: 1. Try to open Photoshop, an app I use almost every day 2. Type in 'phot...' 3. Autocomplete successfully 4. Just at the point I hit enter, it changes autocomplete suggestion to random file i have not opened in 7 years ('Photonic Irrigation Techniques of the Yagi')

1039 points by shiftpgdn 6y ago

Just tried this on my iPhone, took me to Realty.com but not before being forced through a CAPTCHA page. It’s not an excuse, but I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

kmutahar 6y ago
The CAPTCHA is part of the site and has nothing to do with the domain. The CAPTCHA is provided by Cloudflare and it’s up to the customer to chose to show it before access to the site since it can decrease spam and hug of deaths
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Wow suddenly I have a great deal more sympathy for Safari's behavior. When a site is that hostile to visitors, steering them away is almost a value-added service.

igammarays 6y ago

Probably because he has Realtor.com in his history. I didn't, so Realty.com worked for me.

jameshawkins 6y ago
I don't think I have either Realty.com or Realtor.com in my history and I was able to reproduce. In the video, it looks like he tries it on a few devices at the Apple Store, which likely have little history.
minkzilla 6y ago
I have never been to either site and was able to reproduce what the post says.
pbreit 6y ago
Still wrong behavior. There's no way a standalone domain name should go elsewhere.
rcthompson 6y ago
Did you watch the video? He tried it on a bunch of demo phones in an Apple Store and they all did the redirect.
cortesoft 6y ago
I didn't have either... if i typed "realty.com", safari tried to autocomplete with a second 'm' in com (realty.comm), and then took me to realtor.com when i hit "go" (even though the 'first suggestion' said 'realty.com' If I hit space after 'realty.com', it would try a google search... but if i hit space and then delete the space, it would send me to realty.com Super confusing... this is on iOS 13.3.1

jm1234567890 6y ago

I can’t reproduce this on my iPhone

jameshawkins 6y ago

I just tried this on Safari on my phone - I was sent to Realtor.com as well. I tried it a few times and was redirected each time, even though I typed "realty.com" in the URL bar (and it didn't auto-correct before I hit "Go").

pbreit 6y ago
Me, too. Absolutely should not happen. Will give the benefit of the doubt that it's a glitch. Still unacceptable, certainly for a .com.
donmcronald 6y ago
Wow. I'd be livid if I were this guy. That's an expensive domain. Even if it's in the history, the browser shouldn't be guessing at what to do when it gets exact instructions.
kace91 6y ago
It doesn’t work for me. I wonder if it’s location related? I’m in spain if it makes any difference.
- CGamesPlay 6y ago
  Is your phone in English? That seems more likely to be related.
  - 542458 6y ago
    My phone is in English, but I didn’t get the redirect. I’m in Canada.
    - lutoma 6y ago
      Didn't happen for me either in Germany (despite English iOS). May be US-specific?
- kevinschumacher 6y ago

saagarjha 6y ago

This has been driving me mad for the better part of a year: the autocomplete behavior in Safari is totally broken. Last year it started picking words from your query and going through your history and using that to autocomplete so you'd always go to some random thing from your history that's barely relevant even for the most generic search terms (if I type "ptrace" I want to go to a web search, not some random Stack Overflow question I clicked on two years ago that happened to have "ptrace" in its title). Now it's randomly loading other websites I have never been to when I type search terms (I searched "sketch" the other day and it took me to "sketchers.com"). It's WWDC week, so FB7333211 for the first one and another incoming once I can reproduce this reliably. Please fix your stuff, Apple. Oh, while I'm here: trying to escape out of the autocomplete suggestion is also awful, it's some sort of combination of ⎋ and ⌫ and the arrow keys until you can get the thing to not show up in the bar, and then you have to look very closely to make sure that it's not going to send you to the Top Hit anyways.

throwanem 6y ago
HTH: The quickest way I know to dismiss suggestions in favor of a search is to hit Space after whatever intended search term is matching a suggestion.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  This used to work! But now it doesn't because it's doing page title match, and the title of course is something like "ptrace returning EINVAL" and now your space still makes it match…
searchableguy 6y ago
Why would you have history of what you searched 2 years ago? I automatically clear my history every day. It sounds like a privacy issue when someone gets your phone.
- ryanianian 6y ago
  I never clear my history. Nothing is more satisfying than being nerd-swiped by an article and seeing it already visited.

martin-adams 6y ago

This doesn't do it for me in the UK, but I did wonder if there was a spelling auto correction happening between the Go and it hitting the address bar. Looks like a bug nonetheless.

hn_check 6y ago

I would assume the store devices (Best Buy) are locked to a small set of domains for obvious reasons. Further it seems that it's adding an extra m on the end on all but the first. EDIT: LOL, -10 on this post. This place is such a swamp of imbeciles. Again, this is 100% a DNS issue, and note that the majority do not have this. Verizon or some other specific provider is blocking what they see, incorrectly, as typosquatting. Guy tried zero Android devices in comparison. Probably because he knew all of the "HRURR EVIL APPLE MAKING MONEY REDIRECTING" sloths would run with it.

unreal37 6y ago
I would assume you're being downvoted for making an incorrect assumption.
- hn_check 6y ago
  Downvotes on HN have little correlation with correctness. Idiocy reigns supreme here just like every other site. I will restate the assumption that Best Buy's network is filtered. Of course it is. It would be absolutely idiotic to assume otherwise. Further many DNS services have typosquatting protection where if they see an uncommon domain mirroring a "legitimate" (e.g. more common) one it blocks it or forwards you. Is this why this demo does this? Who knows. A remarkable number of people seem to not have this problem. My iPad - nope. My iPhone - nope. So what now? Clearly it is not systemic, however much a small assortment of angry trolls demand it be.
cortesoft 6y ago
It happens on my iPhone... and I actually also get the extra 'm' when i type the 'realty.com'

00deadbeef 6y ago

I ended up at realty.com on iOS 13

asdf21 6y ago
Realty.com on a iPhone XR

013a 6y ago

Cannot replicate on the iOS 14 beta. While I get a suggestion for realtor.com, typing realty.com and hitting go takes me to realty.com.

jdeibele 6y ago
I can't replicate on the iOS beta or the MacOS beta for realty.com. For "sketch" - first result Safari shows is sketchup.google.com but it shows Skechers.com as a choice. BTW, been super pleased with the betas so far.

gruez 6y ago

Can't replicate it on ios 13.5.1. Then again I also have a bunch of safari features turned off (eg. suggestions, preloading) so it could be that.

StavrosK 6y ago
He mentions in the post that turning suggestions off fixes it.

donohoe 6y ago

Hard to read on Mobile page. Here is non-mobile link: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157161487396994&id=501751993 https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157161487396...

llacb47 6y ago
Yep, URL should be changed
- andybak 6y ago
  Not so fast. The altered link requires a login to Facebook. The original actually shows partial content.
  - dang 6y ago
    Hmm, I'm not seeing that.
dang 6y ago
Ok, changed from https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157161487396994&id=501751993 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1015716148739699....

heavymark 6y ago

File a bug report on https://webkit.org/reporting-bugs/ https://webkit.org/reporting-bugs/. Unlike the apple bug reporter where it goes into an abyss and might be years before a resolution or even a reply, with the webkit reporting system I usually get a response from apple employees very quickly and majority of the items fixed in the next release or two.

saagarjha 6y ago
Sadly I think this is specifically a Safari bug, so it pretty much has to go into Feedback Assistant. (I figure if you file a bug for WebKit they'll tell you to go report it there anyways.)
pier25 6y ago
That has _not_ been my experience when reporting bugs to webkit. I've reported a couple of bugs that are still there, years after I reported them. See this one for example reported in 2016: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162512 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162512 Or this other one from 6 months ago and still no response from the team: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207049 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207049
VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
No way. I've reported several iOS Safari bugs to the webkit tracker and all of them were marked confirmed and not a single one has been fixed. In the last 3 years. Apple is in way over its head trying to build/maintain a web browser on mobile and desktop.
om2 6y ago
This in particular is a Safari bug, not WebKit, so not ideal to file there. If anyone files a case of this with sysdiagnose and screen recording and posts the FB# here, I will make sure it gets looked at.

grimmdude 6y ago

Same happens for me, realty.com -> realtor.com. However, explicitly typing https://realty.com https://realty.com works fine. iOS 13.5.1

baggy_trough 6y ago

What drives me mad is typing queries that have a space. Most of the time it'll do the intended search, but sometimes it'll try to go directly to the domain with the space which immediately fails.

partdavid 6y ago
Personally I hate conflating the URL entry space with the search query space. Which is why I was so disappointed that Firefox removed my ability to separate them recently.
- SubiculumCode 6y ago
  I keep Firefox up to date on my Windows box (version 77.0.1) and I still have the ability to have a dedicated search box. Are you on a pre-release channel?
  - partdavid 6y ago
    You have the ability to have a dedicated search box, but your URL bar is also a search box, and you can't turn it off. I want to enter URLs in a box which doesn't try to autocomplete as a search, doesn't search my search engine, doesn't try to fill in missing TLDs, etc. I had something close before 75.0, which introduced the "revamped" address bar that is also swollen. I separated the search box not because I want a search box (I really don't want a browser with a "search box" at all) but because I want un-interpreted, un-looked-up URLs. Though the current URL box doesn't seem to actually search implicitly, it's really hard to tell if its suggestions are coming from the search engine or not and it's at least a step back in the wrong direction). I'd love any suggestions for making the URL box dumber.
    - jwitthuhn 6y ago
      This is still possible in Firefox 77 if I am understanding correctly. The magic entries in about:config are keyword.enabled - Turning this off will make firefox never search for something you type in the address bar. browser.fixup.alternate.enabled - Turning this off will make firefox never try to "fix" the url you type in by putting .com on the end of it.

josefresco 6y ago

I was redirected to realtor.com - iPhone 11 iOS 13.4.1

yqsk 6y ago

Replicated on my iPhone

xt00 6y ago

hopefully apple doesn't just whitelist realty.com to forward to realtor.com.. They should actually send you to the qualified URL if you type in a .com or whatever.. like who these days types http:// http:// or https:// https:// ? In chrome for example it hides the http or https now..

codezero 6y ago

There’s a pretty simple explanation, and I think the behavior is almost certainly a bug or a UX edge case they overlooked. The entry in safari is acting only as a search box it seems, and Go takes you to the first result that is finds - which is the first result on Google, likely a paid ad, or just coincidentally a higher ranking. If you visit the realty.com site directly (Not suggesting this is a workaround, see thread), then type it in, Safari remembers it and gives it higher priority. This seems to be a quirk of a “first visit” UX - it still is meaningful to anyone who has competitors with similar names, and I’d call it a bug to not check the domain first, though assuming good intent, maybe it does, but something about that domain is not right for some heuristic (HSTS, something else?)

marcinzm 6y ago
>If you visit the realty.com site directly How? He literally types "realty.com" (ie: the full domain) in the bar and it goes to "realtor.com."
- codezero 6y ago
  That’s what I thought I explained. If you look at the list of items that appear below his typing, the “Top Hit” is “realtor.com” - I am saying that this is reading the typing as a search, and not as a domain. It’s a bug imo that the domain isn’t considered first. I think it came across as if I’m saying this is correct behavior, I’m not, I’m saying it’s following the UX available, it’s not a nefarious trick to redirect to a competitor. It’s still damaging and needs to be fixed.
  - ianferrel 6y ago
    I don't think people are misreading your post as approving of the bug. What people are responding to is your suggestion of a workaround: "If you visit the realty.com site directly..." And the question is: How do you visit the site directly if typing the domain name into the url field doesn't take you there. Your workaround either doesn't work or needs more explanation.

xrisk 6y ago

Heads up: this seems to be a mobile Safari bug only; I can’t reproduce it on macOS.

geuis 6y ago
I was just able to replicate it in Safari 13.1.1 on Catalina

wincy 6y ago

My wife's new iPhone SE 2020 does the same thing. My iPhone 6 Plus on iOS 12.4 correctly goes to realty.com

elliekelly 6y ago
Does your phone have private browsing turned on and hers have it turned off?

ljcus10 6y ago

Does anyone believe that Apple is making money off this?

ljcus10 6y ago

Does anybody believe Apple is making money off this? Redirecting websites to competitors.

samirelanduk 6y ago
Probably not tbh - the cost/benefit of getting such small amounts of money versus enormous reputational damage is not remotely worth it.
- ljcus10 6y ago
  My question is can they bid on it behind the scenes like a keyword. Siri suggestions must have some type of revenue.
  - prawn 6y ago
    It would be a poorly considered algorithm rather than some bidding situation. No sane person would build this intentionally. The big companies have too much to lose especially.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Basically, this is Google's entire business: getting paid to send us where someone else wants us to go. Google are "big". Why wouldn't Apple want in on this action?
      - Carpetsmoker 6y ago
        Sponsored search results are marked as such in the Google results, it's nothing like the automagic redirect Safari is showing here.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    Apple uses this to promote first party services like Apple Music, Apple News, and App Store. All of these generate revenue for Apple. If they land on Google, then Google would be promoting YouTube Music, Google News, etc, which is lost revenue for Apple.

SigmundA 6y ago

Want another fun Safari auto complete bug? Have a tab open that is changing its title on an interval. Try to type something in any tabs address bar and use the arrow or a mouse to try and pick a result, the focus will constant jump and reset to the beginning every time the title changes on any tab, making it nearly impossible to pick a result if its changing fast enough. The auto complete list seems to be populated with web page titles in real time and the list is being modified causing the results to be rerendered. I found this after trying to use a Super Micro IPMI that updates the title with the current FPS on every frame, had it in a background tab and couldn't get to a search result, oh the frustration and time that cost me to actually track down. Reported it to Apple of course nothing.

geuis 6y ago
Yup was able to replicate that with setInterval(() => document.title = `${Math.random()}`, 1000)
crenwick 6y ago
This behavior sends me to undesired pages on a daily basis. Thank you for finally telling me what causes it! It essentially makes basic keyboard shortcuts useless on safari.
emmelaich 6y ago
Holy sh!&*@#!t thank you. I had similar behaviour with a different remote BMC thing.
spiderfarmer 6y ago
So that's how this happens. I always thought it had something to do with sticky arrow keys or something.
- Darkphibre 6y ago
  Reminds me of an issue on Windows I just figured out. My keyboard input kept getting yanked to the other PC. For some reason, my mouse cursor moves back and forth when I use the arrow keys. Been happening for a while, but whatever. Magic Mouse (KBM emulator) at some point got configured so that holding ctrl-shift-mousemove would snap the mouse to the PC in that direction. Sooo, Ctrl-Shift-Left (highlight previous word, something I would do frequently [like just now to highlight and italicize 'frequently']) would end up also moving the mouse left a few pixels... which would send the mouse and keyboard over to the other PC. Took me a few weeks to track that one down.

trav4225 6y ago

This is pretty typical of most software these days: user-hostile and painfully dumbed down. Browsers especially seem to be able to get away with this because there are practically no non-annoying alternatives that are sufficiently secure and compatible.

rjeli 6y ago

Alright, while we’re talking about iOS autocomplete - I have a question. I noticed that sometimes when I’m typing an out-of-dictionary word, sometimes the keyboard will actually type the key next to the key I tapped that would type a real word. I imagine they’ve put a lot of effort into making the touch keyboard accurate, so is this a feature to that end or, more likely, is it a Baader-Meinhof thing, that I only notice when it happens?

smitop 6y ago
This is probably the keyboard adjusting the tap area of the keys based on the predicted likelyhood of that key being pressed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=wPmVKyhyl9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=wPmVKyhyl9U
- rjeli 6y ago
  Wow, I never would have been able to google that. Thanks for confirming I'm not crazy.
nbardy 6y ago
I just moved to android and this bugs the shit out of me. It’s definitely real. I had to retype a character once by using the side of the key farthest from the one it was touch jacking.
vultour 6y ago
I always felt like I was the only one that experienced this. Even worse, I think sometimes it highlights the character you actually want, but once you release your finger it inserts something else. It happens very rarely but I remember I had to retype a character 5 or 6 times at one point, thinking I was going mad.

graeme 6y ago

Already fixed? Can’t replicate on ipad pro ios 13

ljcus10 6y ago
Not fixed it just does not happen on every device but it even happens on MacBooks and iMacs

analog31 6y ago

I wonder what it does in other localities. Is "realtor" even a word, outside of the US?

pesfandiar 6y ago
FWIW, it's a trademark and very much protected in Canada too.

classics2 6y ago

Wow. And these are all on high value searches. Somebody is taking money here, no way this is an autocomplete error.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ilaksh 6y ago

This is another reason people should not buy Apple.

phs318u 6y ago

I've just tried this on both macOS and iOS. macOS 10.15.5 Safari 13.1.1 Tested 4 configurations: Search engine: DDG vs Google Wipr adblock extension on/off. In all four cases: Typed in realty.com and hit enter - got realty.com. Typed in sketch and hit enter - got search results for the word sketch. Tested exact same configurations (DDG/Google, Wipr on/off) on my phone. iOS 13.5.1 on iPhone XR Same results as above. I'm just not seeing the behaviour that's being described here. Perhaps its a geo thing? I'm in Australia. I assume most people here are in the US?

Karupan 6y ago
I see the same behaviour down under. I wonder if Siri has got anything to do with it? Mine is always disabled.
- phs318u 6y ago
  I've got Siri enabled. It's odd. EDITED: Sorry, I just realised, I'm not sure if you meant you're seeing the same behaviour as me, or as everyone else.
  - Karupan 6y ago
    I meant I see the same behaviour as you :-) Can open those URLs just fine without any redirection.

rad_gruchalski 6y ago

Not seeing this in Germany. iOS 13.5.1.

AndrewKemendo 6y ago

I just replicated this on my iPhone 11 iOS 13 on Safari. Northeastern US, home WIFI connection. Does not replicate on Chrome or Firefox on the same phone

breatheoften 6y ago

Url editing on iphone safari is highly messed up experience ... the text selection and editing behavior is just broken since ios 12 or 11 -- whichever one introduced the new text selection model ... My standard easy repro -- go to a long url and try to edit the second to last segment of the url path (something which i do for work frequently when folks send me links to projects under development). Enjoy the frustration.

eclipxe 6y ago
Works fine for me. I just long press on the keyboard to get into cursor edit mode and swipe along until I get to where I want.
- ajzinsbwbs 6y ago
  Nice, thanks! Now that you remind me I’m sure I’ve seen that move before, but forgot about it and have been frustrated when editing urls every day since. I think this is the worst thing about using an iPhone for me and probably a lot of other users. Here is the full incantation to get it to work: 1. Touch the address bar and the keyboard will appear. 2. Long press on the spacebar (other parts of the keyboard won’t do it) until a cursor appears in the address bar. 3. Without lifting your finger after the long press, start dragging your finger left and right. The cursor will move. Maybe writing that out will help me remember. If only there was some affordance in the ui indicating this common use is supported.
  - breatheoften 6y ago
    This is better than what I've been doing ... But I find the experience of the cursor navigation by long-press on keyboard quite odd still ... if you stay in the mode for awhile -- and try sliding back and forth its quite an odd experience as it feels like the algorithm behind the cursor motion and its relationship to scrolling becomes less clear over time rather than more understood ... Maybe there is something wrong with my touchscreen ... I can't figure out how to get the soft keyboard to scroll the cursor position reliably past the viewable area -- sometimes it does scroll and sometimes it doesn't and its a bit of a mystery to me what the intended motion input into the device is that will meet my desires ... seems like maybe the panning speed needs to be proportional to the fingers vertical height in the keyboard or something -- no panning up top, and fast panning below

cglong 6y ago

I received my new American Express and, when trying to enter the URL on the sticker, Safari suggested a phishing site as the "top result". I tried reporting this to both Apple and AMEX but never received a response :(

hirsin 6y ago
Maybe worth semi weaponizing it? Make your own phishing page that gets into this list (easier said than done) and as soon as they click the sign in button (pre credential entry) splash a page explaining that Apple is busted?
- willcipriano 6y ago
  Go for the gold, make the result for apple a blog post about how apples suggestions are terrible
- vmception 6y ago
  no way make it a Tim Cook crypto giveaway with a continuous livestream of a video of him talking about technology, and a countdown why should you have to only shell out money for some petty bs, if you randomly find a gold mining claim you go excavate the gold.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  If it was open source you could fix it yourself, sounds easier.

moon2 6y ago

Weird, my iPhone is in English, but I live in Brazil, and couldn’t reproduce it (iOS 13.5.1). However, a bit unrelated, Siri suggested a website whose title is “Home - Donuts” when I was typing news.ycombinator. And the link for it is just “news”

fortran77 6y ago

This is truly outrageous. Why would Apple want to destroy this man's business?

suyash 6y ago

I tried on mobile safari and it went to reality.com - bug didn't reproduce for me

emmelaich 6y ago
reality or realty?
- suyash 6y ago
  oh my bad, just tried realty and it worked too as it went to realty.com
mod 6y ago
Seems like typing realty.com and getting sent to reality.com is bad, too.

egypturnash 6y ago

I just typed realty.com into OSX Safari 13.1.1 and got the proper site. Then when I picked up my iPhone (ios 13.5) and started to do the same test it autocompleted 'real' into 'realty.com'. On the OSX side, the 'search' pane of settings has Safar Suggestions and Quick Website Search on, has preload top hit and show favorites off, and has DDG as the search. On IOS I have DDG as the search, and have Search Engine Suggestions, Safari Suggestions, and Quick Website Search on, and Preload Top Hit off. And have Frequently Visited Sites off. It is worth mentioning that OSX Safari offered 'realtor.com' as a 'Top Hit' suggestion below the address bar, which I could have chosen with a quick downarrow, return, but at no point did it try to fill in autocomplete for me. I almost wonder if this is happening to the owner of realty.com because they have spent a lot of time looking at realtor.com while building a site that competes with it, and Safari now thinks this is a site they really love to go to. — EDIT. Oh no I missed the part where there are videos of this being done on demo iPhones at the Apple store. Crazy! And not good.

crazygringo 6y ago
Yup, similar -- I've never visited either in my life prior, but on macOS it goes to realty.com, but I am shocked that on iOS I type in "realty.com" and it doesn't autocorrect, but lists "realtor.com" as the top suggestion below, but when I hit enter it goes to realtor.com instead of realty.com! That is seriously bad functionality. I've already been annoyed at iOS's keyboard overly autocorrecting, but to change a URL I typed in explicitly really pisses me off.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I'm curious, did yours also have the extra m (realty.comm)? Both the 2nd and 3rd phone the video shows has the extra m, which makes me think it's an actual bug in the autocomplete, where it has completed to "realtor.com" (notice realtor has one more letter than realty), but you actually don't see it (except the last letter, the extra m at the end). So when you press enter, it goes to realtor. If you do get the extra m, can you play around and see what happens if you delete the extra m at the end? Does it go to realtor.co? realty.com?

surround 6y ago

Why doesn’t it give you any indication that it’s going to “correct” your query before you hit enter? This has been bugging me lately.

markstos 6y ago

In Jira if you type an autocomplete @name too fast it will show the right person selected in a list but autocomplete the wrong result.

potatoman111 6y ago

This is wild though... full domain entered and directs to a competitor? Is Apple getting kick backs? Wonder what small businesses are crippled by this?

recursive 6y ago

Killer service idea for apple users: RealUrlBar.io You type in a url into a textbox, and then it gives you a hyperlink to that site.

awinder 6y ago

There’s a cottage industry of these terms apparently, I have “slickdeals.com” autocompleting when typing “sl” and it forwards to a google “snow leopard” search. Maddening.

nodamage 6y ago

I've run into a similar problem on the Mac version of Safari for a while now: I'll paste in a full (http:// http:// or https:// https://) URL and hit Enter, but instead of loading the requested URL it just reloads the current page. I sometimes have to paste it a couple times before it will actually load the URL I want. Anyone else encountered this or am I just going crazy?

scarlac 6y ago
You are not crazy. There is a bug in the last 2 minor releases of Safari where you can type in or paste a link and it'll just end up reloading the same page. You can do this several times. It drives me mad, quite honestly. But it is indeed a bug. No idea why. I doubt it's related to this suggestion feature.
saagarjha 6y ago
I've seen this too, but never figured out why it's doing this. If the underlying bug is some sort of timing related thing, then it might be related?
scottjg 6y ago
i was hoping someone would bring this up. it happens to me all the time.
- bichonnages 6y ago
  Me too!
toxik 6y ago
Ah so I’m not going crazy. These things are just... the type of bug that indicates a deeper issue in the code. Poor software engineering decisions, and many of them. Mobile Safari had a bug for a year where the zoom function would get stuck somehow, breaking rendering completely. I wonder how that happened too.
doersino 6y ago
This infuriates me every single day, and it also happens when just editing the URL of the current page. Typing a space at the end of the URL and waiting a second before hitting enter seems to circumvent this issue.

wrkronmiller 6y ago

I just tried this on desktop Safari 14.0 and I went to realty.com without a problem.

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

money money money. MONEY

gotoeleven 6y ago

The best feature of safari is "Remove from dock"

40four 6y ago

I tested on my iPhone and it does not have this behavior. It went to the correct site on Safari & on Firefox. Why is he demonstrating on random phones in an Apple store? That’s not really a good example of a ‘clean’, out of the box device. A ton of people have tinkered with those phones. Isn’t it possible that some other people typed ‘realtor.com’ in all those phones in the past? Either way it you type a specific, valid URL, it should never be overridden with an autocomplete.

wasnthere 6y ago

It works correctly if you add a space after realty.com Tested on iPhone, Safari, iOS 13.5.1

recursive 6y ago
I don't have an iphone, but what would correct behavior actually be for "realty.com "?

natch 6y ago

Was able to reproduce this with Safari on an iPhone with search engine (should be irrelevant though) set to Duckduckgo. After a couple repeated failures (where it went to realtor.com) I tried typing in http://realty.com http://realty.com (I forgot to use https fwiw) then it visited the real site realty.com and again went to that same real correct site on every subsequent attempt using just the bare string realty.com —- of course that’s too much to ask of users, nor would anyone have a chance to ask them.

dhosek 6y ago

Safari's latest version has added some asynchronous coding that has impact behavior of the browser in negative ways. If you type the first part of a URL and there are multiple options so you use down arrow to get to the one that you want, a lot of times, the list is still being populated and Safari will jump the cursor back up to the top of the list. I think this is part of that same bad coding.

Gertig 6y ago

Just the word "realty" (and "realty.com") sends me to "realtor.com"

d0100 6y ago

Couldn't this lead to a nice settlement for this guy? Or would "it's a bug" be an acceptable defense for Apple?

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Apple and this website have no business relationship, so there’s no breech of contract. Beyond that, Apple‘s duty of care is really very low. If Google can take money to sent people to a website that otherwise would rank below yours, Apple certainly isn’t liable for doing the same without intention.
jpttsn 6y ago
It baffles me how many commenters here and on Facebook just assume this is somehow illegal. I‘m not saying I know the US Code by heart or anything, but lacking the basic intuition for what the laws of the land are must be a terrible disadvantage.

jeffmcmahan 6y ago

Replicated on iOS 12.3.1 iPhone SE

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago

Safari is the absolute worst web browser by far. Both mobile and desktop. This kind of egregious error is only the most obvious part. Try doing a WebRTC conference call in Safari. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, Jitsi Meet, etc, etc, etc. None of them support Safari. Do you know why? It's because Safari is absolutely riddled with bugs: [1][2][3]. It is incredible how bad Safari is. [1] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211181 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211181 [2] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212669 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212669 [3] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212780 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212780

lern_too_spel 6y ago
I once tried to watch a video sped up in Safari, and the sound was awful. An acquaintance tried to report the bug to Apple years ago, and it went into a black hole. Compare to the public bug trackers for Firefox and Chromium, and it's easy to understand why Safari remains nearly useless.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  WebKit has a public bug tracker.
  - VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
    Apple Safari (mobile and desktop) doesn't use the WebKit.org bug tracker. They do their own thing.
    - shuckles 6y ago
      Video playback is a WebKit feature.
      - lern_too_spel 6y ago
        The platform audio libraries that Webkit uses on MacOS and iOS are not part of Webkit.

nixpulvis 6y ago

And people wonder why I've been begging for the ability to set my own default browser in iOS for so long... So many people defend Apple's walled garden, and then they do things like this, be it on purpose or by accident. What a mess.

noisy_boy 6y ago
TIL you can't set your own default browser on iOS.
- dpacmittal 6y ago
  Until 2 days back. With iOS 14 you can now choose default browser and mail client

ncmncm 6y ago

Will this be enough to make you swear off ever buying another Apple product? If not, they have no reason to fix it. You will get used to it, soon enough, and like every other offense, it will soon seem unremarkable. The battered wife doesn't leave him because, she says, "I can still stand it."

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cromka 6y ago

What really drives me mad is that there is no public bugreporting for any Apple soft, except for the betas obviously. Only then we'd be able to have an idea of the sheer extent of bugginess of their products, and how the heavily advertised features never work. I hope someone with energy and time actually creates and maintains an open, alternative bugzilla for that purpose specifically.

djrogers 6y ago
> What really drives me mad is that there is no public bugreporting for any Apple soft, except for the betas obviously. Second google result for ‘report apple bug’ : https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
- sb8244 6y ago
  I think that the intent of parent is to have the bugs be publicly visible, like https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=status:open https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=status:open
- saagarjha 6y ago
  That's even more of a black hole than Feedback Assistant.

jolmg 6y ago

> Seems not that legal > That seems incredibly illegal. Why would it be illegal? I understand that it's unfair, but what law would be broken here?

dec0dedab0de 6y ago

I always hated having search in the address bar, And hidding the full url. Its gotten even worse with all the screwy tlds.

djrogers 6y ago

Odd, totally not happening for me - and I’m a frequent realtor.com user. I type in realty.com and it takes me to the correct website.

the_other 6y ago

All of these take me to DDG search results on my iPhone X. - reality - reality.com - sketch I tried with “Search Engine Suggestions” on and off, with the same results. I couldn’t test with “Safari Suggestions”. The switch was disabled. I assume this is due to having Siri disabled.

alister 6y ago

Trying to reproduce this Apple bug reminded me of another annoyance in the UI. I went to enable Safari Suggestions on my iPad, but it wouldn’t let me. The button remained greyed out. It turns out that I need enable Show Siri Suggestions in App before I can enable Safari Suggestions. Buy why? They seem unrelated. If you stick to the defaults in the Settings menu, everything is fine, but if you change them you get exposed to inscrutable dependencies among the settings. I imagine there is an explosion of complexity that isn’t easily tested.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rapnie 6y ago

Tangential. I find it annoying that Firefox hardcoded a whole bunch of URL's in their search bar history. I have 'Provide suggestions' off (privacy), yet it suggests me walmart.com, facebook.com, americanexpress.com, etcetera.. all sites that I have zero interest for. I guess they must be there, because they earn some money from it?

w33n1s 6y ago

I typed tits.com and it went to boobs.net

gvpmahesh 6y ago

Realty.com owner can technically sue the Apple and settle for a million dollars at least

rawoke083600 6y ago

As an android user who has an apple-only-girlfriend... I'm always amazed at how exceptionally terrible autocomplete is on her iPhone, and how much better the Android counterpart is. Lol the complete absolute nonsense the iPhone of hers will predict is crazy for a premium phone from the worlds most valuable company. Not hating (I love their hardware - not software) just wondering why is it so bad on Apple ? Is there like a setting she must switch on like "Planet Earth English" ?

easygenes 6y ago
Maybe she’s the problem? It “learns” as you go based on your habits, so she probably just writes very differently from you.
- rawoke083600 6y ago
  I was thinking that ! Surely it must uses your like past history right ? Is there something she should turn on ?

noodlesUK 6y ago

I think this is symptomatic of the really overzealous approach that Apple has towards autocomplete and autocorrect these days. The autocorrect has a nasty habit of replacing my correct sentences containing absolutely normal non-technical vocabulary with annoyingly incorrect garbage. It routinely replaces “well” with “we’ll” when it makes absolutely no sense to do so, and generally adds apostrophes all over the place. Not to mention the way it handles names. Sometimes I want my name to not be capitalised, such as in my email address. Even pressing backspace, then typing the same thing in again after it autocorrects incorrectly doesn’t solve anything.

benhurmarcel 6y ago
I just prefer to disable autocorrect.

beshrkayali 6y ago

Safari lost it when it stopped showing full url in address bar.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Firefox, all working hard to take away the Web's usefulness, feature by feature.

bsmith0 6y ago
Really? That's a very cynical outlook.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Indeed it is, and I am not a cynical person. I tend to attribute incompetence over malice, and I am not even sure that malice is actually at play here. But the reality is that with every release of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, piece by piece, the Web's most important behaviors and features, the things which make it so awesome, are being removed.

HenryBemis 6y ago

I only made it halfway through the comments. I like my machines to NOT do the thinking for me and allow me to make my shortcuts. One of the things I appreciateon my (default) phone setup (Android, Honor 8x, Firefox, DDG) is that when I type on the browser's URL/search the autocorrect is OFF. When I type in the DDF search form the autocorrect is ON. I find this super logical (I keep suggestions off)

mcintyre1994 6y ago

Not getting this in the UK. I’m guessing their suggestions are location specific maybe? Though I don’t recall ever seen Safari do this myself.

callamdelaney 6y ago

Have you tried typing 'form/multipart' into your firefox url bar? I expect a google search - what I get is a redirect to `https://form.com/multipart` https://form.com/multipart` - what?!

jeroenhd 6y ago
Firefox does that to fix quickly typed domains if they're not found by DNS (it appends .com and tries to load that). It's probably because form/multipart is nearly a functional URL (where "form" is the hostname, which could very well be resolved in corporate networks or through a hosts file, for example). If you want to be sure you're executing a search, either use a keyword for Google or start your query with a question mark. A quick way to execute a search is to hit control+k, which puts focus to the URL bar and prepopulates it with "? " so that whatever you type after it is executed as a search. I actually dislike it when Firefox does the opposite for websites like pi.hole or fritz.box. The domain does resolve, but you get redirected to a search page regardless and Firefox put a suggestion to navigate to what you typed. My address bar is not a Google search form, it's an address bar that happens to search on Google when I type something that's not a web address.

piyush_soni 6y ago

Don't have an Apple device right now, but if I go to BrowserStack.com (just created a free account there) and try it on a 'real cloud iPhone 11 Pro' (yeah, whatever that means) I cannot reproduce it. But then they don't allow you to go and check if the suggestions are turned on or off so not sure.

fastball 6y ago

I feel like when Brave's similar behavior was posted on HN a week or so ago, the company itself was getting a lot more hate for what I think is a less egregious behavior. Why the discrepancy?

jkulubya 6y ago

Safari autocomplete on macOS is such a mess. Ever since I switched to DuckDuckGo, I have to give it about two seconds between when I type a word and when I can arrow down into the suggested pages and click enter. Otherwise, when the suggested results from DDG come back the arrow position is reset and I end up tapping enter to go to the wrong page. Didn’t have this issue with google search or chrome.

joshjdr 6y ago

I turned off the options in Settings > Siri & Search > Safari and now “s k e t c h return” goes to google not skechers.com!

sbr464 6y ago

Went to realty.com on first test. Catalina 10.15.4, Safari 13.1

boredatworkme 6y ago

I just tried it on my iphone and I don't see this behavior. I have this option of "pre-load top hit" disabled. I understand not a lot of users will have this disabled and is probably what is causing this issue. Therefore, this is more of an issue with the aggressive suggestions engine for websites that a testament to how poor Safari as a browser is (which is what many comments here seem to suggest).

chadlavi 6y ago

Can't reproduce on iPhone X in the beta of iOS 14. Though I've also never had this sort of thing happen to me generally. Safari always either does a search for what I typed it goes to the exact address I entered.

bad_user 6y ago

On that same note Apple's auto-correction really sucks. On my iPhone I replaced the keyboard with SwiftKey b/c I kept making embarrassing mistakes with the default keyboard.

nsonha 6y ago

The whole idea of recommendation systems is based on the assumption that you're gonna keep doing the samething over. Its accuracy is depending on whether you are a person of habbits or constantly changing. While in some aspects having a pattern is good (work or routine life tasks), in many others it's an indication of something unhealthy or not optimal. You don't want to be that person that seems to have a limited vocab and just keep using the same phares. You also most likely dont want to keep buying the same stuff or reading just that one particular genre/author/news outlet. Autocomplete particularly never worked to me and I'm happy that I cant seem to be typecasted by a machine. As a software developer, I wonder what the people who made these engines think. Are they actually happy that their code makes people more predictable?

sli 6y ago

I've noticed that Safari on iOS autocompletes so aggressively that if you go to a full URL on a site (e.g. https://example.com/somesection/page.html https://example.com/somesection/page.html) you can pretty much no longer type just "example.com" into the address bar. It will pretty damn aggressively autofill in the URL to the page you visited earlier. Maybe it was a bug in an earlier version that's been fixed, I don't do a whole lot of browsing on my phone. But that was (or still is) easily the most obnoxious browser bug in my recent memory.

parliament32 6y ago

Omnibars and browsers "guessing what you want" in general is pretty trash. I'm having an issue with the Firefox one: If I type a word, like "resolv" into the omnibar, it gives me the option to "search with google". Great. But if I type in "resolv.conf", it by default wants to "visit" (thinking .conf. is a tld)... but it doesn't even show me the option to "search with google" in the dropdown! I've literally had to resort to typing "google resolv.conf" which is a super gross way of going about it. I don't know if combining search and URLs in one box was ever a good idea. I feel I preferred the dual-box layout, where you had a URL bar on the left and a search bar on the right.

Daub 6y ago

The broken Spotlight search of OSX was one reason I moved to Windows. Day after day of this: 1. Try to open Photoshop, an app I use almost every day 2. Type in 'phot...' 3. Autocomplete successfully 4. Just at the point I hit enter, it changes autocomplete suggestion to random file i have not opened in 7 years ('Photonic Irrigation Techniques of the Yagi')