Recover a Mangled URL in the Address Bar of Safari, Other Browsers

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Let's say you're reading an article that has a long URL/address. Perhaps you're tying to delete all the extra query string after the core URL and a “?” mark. (I do that all the time for the Particle Debris column.)

And then you make a mistake and delete too much. Alternatively, say you're editing a URL for some other reason and mess up. This full URL

becomes…

Or perhaps you intended to copy the the URL and ended up mistakenly pasting something else.

Sometimes, you may not be able to get back to (or find) the original link, and you desperately need that mangled URL back the way it was when you first loaded the page.

The fix is to hit the ESC key once. The browser stores the original URL when the page is first loaded, and when you hit ESC, that page's original URL is returned to the address bar, overwriting any edits

This tip saves me often, what with all the URL editing I do to insert core URLs into articles without the query string. It's been tested and works in Safari, Firefox, Opera and Chrome. If you use another browser, check it out and let us know if this tip works.

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