TopPicks for Safari is mentioned as an Add-On for Safari to replace the missing TopSites Feature in Safari 14+.

It attempts to look and work similar to the well known features, but it also adds various new possibilities to your Bookmarks.

TopSites main goal is to create a visual Bookmark Picker, so you don’t need to browse long and annoying Bookmark Menus with Subfolder etc, you choose your most favourite Bookmarks you use daily and create visual Tiles for them with live updating Website Thumbnails each time you visited a Website.

IMPORTANT:

TopPicks for Safari is a  two part Application, the main Application is the graphical User Interface providing all the important Work under the Hood to create your Bookmarks, manage Thumbnails and do all the changes tracking.

The other part is the Safari Extension, which adds a Toolbar Button to Safari to invoke the Picker HUD.

Both parts depend on each other, the main Application cannot collect the Data it needs without the Safari Extension, this mean it MUST be enabled, if you prefer to use TopPicks with another Browser, you can, but you will not be able to use the “Get current Page” Feature and all Thumbnails will be static and will not change.

The Main Application is supposed and designed to run as a inactive Background Agent Application with NO Dock Icon, no active Windows etc, but its essential to the Safari Extension to hand all requests and use the Data the Safari Extension provides. This means, you need to keep the main Application running all the time as long as you need it, as soon as you quit it, the Safari’s Toolbar Button will stop working as intended and pop an Error Message.

That said, the Main App can be run as a Dock Application anyway, but it is not intended and can be changed in the Settings Pane

So basically, the Button in Safari’s Toolbar is trigger for the HUD, the HUD will display aways right in front of you current Application e.g. Safari, it takes the suggested Space that the Safari’s current Tab would normally use and display right in place, no need to leave your Browser to another Application, stay focused and where you are…

Some Core Features:

- Simple add current Website in Safari with just a click,  the fastest way to add a Bookmark tile

• the Website Thumbnails are self updating each time you visited a Website from the Picker
• Full Website’s FavIcon support for Tile Caption
• Customisable Background for the Picker HUD
• Monitor Websites like Blogs or News  Tickers for new Content and get notified if a new Content is available right from the Picker
• If you monitor a Website and TopPicks discovered a Change, you can quicklook the Tile with the Spacebar to get a brief preview of the new Content provided by the Website.

- more to come…

The most important part: TopPicks for Safari is not a regular App, its an Agent Background Application that needs to be running always as long you need it.

The Toolbar Button in Safari is just a kind of trigger, but the whole magic and UI happens in the Main application, so if you quit the App and click the Toolbar Button in Safari, nothing will happen, that's for sure.
Keeping this in mind, TopPicks for Safari will not have a Dock Icon or a Menubar that you would expect from a regular Application, it is faceless, to access its Settings or to quit it, you will find its Icon in the Statusbar at the top right corner of your Screen, near the Clock.

By default, TopPicks for Safari can be requested by clicking the depending Toolbar Icon, but TopPicks can activate in more ways of you prefer:

• Hook into Safari 14’s Start Page, in this mode, Ticks will auto activate whenever you open the Start Page, you can see it as an extension to the present “Most used…” Section
• Set a specific Website as your Homepage for new Windows/Tabs and TopPicks will trigger automatically to assist you with your Bookmarks
• TopPicks is also scriptable, if you want to trigger it by a Shortcut or Script, it uses AppleScript and with the following Command you can activate it with other 3rd Party applications:

tell application "TopPicks for Safari" to lookup

How to edit your Bookmarks?

Open TopPicker by clicking the Toolbar Item, once it appeared, choose which

Tile you want to edit, move your Mouse Cursor over it, a small EDIT Gear 

Button will appear in the top right Corner, click it to edit.

The easiest and fastest way is the following:

Navigate to the Website you want to bookmark in safari first, once done, trigger TopPicks, choose the desired Tile and click the “Get current” Button, it will auto collect all needed data from Safari, hit the save Button and wait a moment for the Thumbnail to appear

To set a Wallpaper for the Window, you will find a small edit Btn in the bottom right corner, click it to open the Editor

The Editor is the key entry point to config and setup your Bookmarks, you can access it when you move your Cursor over a Tile you wat to edit, a small gear Button appears in it top right corner, choose it, from here you can set everything up.

The easiest way to do this is to nabigate to the Website you want to bookmark first, once done, open TopPicks, chosse a Tile, enter Editor and click the "get current Page" Button, this will use the actual Website from Safari, it will also automatically generate a Thumbnail, tookup the Title of the Page, you can edit it later, check if a FavIcon is available and display it later below the Thumbnail before the Tile's Caption.

Doing this manually is also possible, but with one requirement:

Addding an URL with a Syntax you would use in a regular Browser is possible but not recommented e.g (google.com), if you do it anayway, it may work, but this is not for sure, TopPicks can guess a missing "http://", but it doesn't know if it is "http://" or "https://", therefore it is recommented to use full URLs, best way is to let TopPicks do it with the "Get current Page" Button.

if you wna tto reset a Tile, click the reset Button, TopPicks will reset the whole Tile to empty state (Important: This happens immediately, no confiramtion appears likke "Are you sure?", therefor, keep always a Backup for your Bookmarks)

The next option is the Delay Slider, what is that for?:

After a Page loaded, TopPicks would take a Snapshot of the Page as a Thumbnail, but just that a Page did load, doesn't mean it is complete, imagine an Image heavy website like Dsney+, or a dynamic Website like your PLEX Meida Server, they generate their Content on the fly while beeing loaded, this means the Snapshot is missing Content or shows dummy preload Images, thats why this Option is.

Whith this you can help TopPicks to find the right moment for Snapshots, so everything looks pretty in the Overlay,eg. in my own Setup, the Disney+ Website Snapshot has to be done up to 7 seconds after the Website itself says "i have loaded", before all the Images arrived here as well, to assist you with this setting, you can turn ON an audible Feedback from TopPick's Settings to know when TopPicks created a Snapshot, so you can fine tune this Option for each Tile.

One important word about the "Save" Button, this Button is disabled by default and activates ONLY if a Save is required while you canged the URL or the Caption, adjusting the Delay Slider or anything else does not requrie a Save, simply click the Cancel/Close Button instead.

Starting with Version1.1+

Remember the old Days of Safari 4 and 5, there was a cool feature that was observing Websites for changes and if there were any, it was indicated by a blue star in the top right corner, unfortunately, this was soon removed and never returned, till now!

TopPicks for Safari has the ability to monitor Websites for changes and if it finds any, it will indicate this as well, but before explaining the usage, please note this:

The website you want to monitor needs a way to advertise its content in a common way, speaking of RSS Feeds, TopPicks for Safari will use these Feeds and compare the latest entry in this Feed to check if there was an update since the last check, so this Feature will work only for Websites that support such features out of the box, this said, Websites like Youtube or any other social media Websites won't support this, but probably any Blog or news ticker will do.

Also please keep in mind, some Websites do not match the Content of their Website and their RSS Feed immediately, there might be a caching delay, so sometimes it may occure TopPicks says it has new Content but it is not yet visible on the Website, this issue occured to me during developement, at least sometimes...

The next time you open TopPicks and it discovered a change, a red ribbon will appear in the top left corner above the Website Thumbnail and the whole Tile starts to wiggle for a short moment to get your attention.

Usage:
Whenever you setup a Website, click the Preloady Button, it will automatically prepare the Thumbnail, collect the Website Title/Caption and check for RSS Feeds.
If it doesn't finy any, the "Monitor" Option will remain disabled, if it finds just one Feed, the Option will enable automatically and you can toggle it on or off, but here comes the best part:

If a Website has multiple RSS Feeds like e.g. "newest news", "recent comments" and so on, TopPicks for Safari will display a Picker for which RSS Feed you want to monitor, so you can decide what your point of interest is.

Setting this up does not require a "Save" Action, these Settings are instant, you can simply close the Editor Window and you are good to go.
As an additional feature for monitoring Websites:

You can quicklook a Tile to see what it means is newest content, to do this hover over a Tile, e.g. if the Ribbon in the top left Corner appeared and hit the Spacebar to get a preview of what's new. Hit it again to close Preview.