In the past, we’ve told you about ways to make more room in Safari’s bookmark bar, by using folders, shorter names, and special symbols. MacOSXHints.com reader nathanator11 has another way to deal with bookmark overload: Assigning custom keyboard shortcuts to some of them, which can then be hidden away, leaving room for others:
All bookmarks appear in the Bookmarks menu. System Preferences lets you add keyboard shortcuts to any menu item. That means you can assign hotkeys to your most commonly used bookmarks. And that means you can stash those bookmarks almost anywhere, instead of trying to find a place for them on your Bookmarks Bar or in the Bookmarks menu.
First, make sure you have a bookmark for the site you want in Safari. Be sure to give it a unique name, one that isn’t used by any other bookmark or menu item. Next, open System Preferences. Go to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard preferences pane. Click Application Shortcuts in the list on the left. Click the plus (+) button below the list of shortcuts. Set the Application to Safari. For Menu Title, enter the exact name of the bookmark you just created. In the Keyboard Shortcut box, key in the shortcut you want assign to it. Make sure that it isn’t one that’s already in use. (Combinations using the Control key are a good bet.) Quit and reopen Safari. You can now use the shortcut you chose instead of clicking the bookmark.
That done, you can move the bookmark to the overflow section of the Bookmarks Bar or anywhere you want in the Bookmarks Menu.
Reader bonobo also reminds us that you can already use Command-1 through Command-9] to access the first nine non-folder bookmarks in Safari. In any case, if you have a large number of bookmarks, assigning hotkeys to some of them can be useful: The point here isn’t that you’re shortening the bookmark itself or getting rid of it. The point is that, once you’ve assigned a hotkey to a bookmark, it doesn’t have to take up prime real estate.