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Open a Safari webarchive from Twitter/X without being redirected

Disabling JavaScript when you open the webarchive file will prevent you from redirecting you to twitter.com.

Suppose you save a Safari webarchive from Twitter/X. When you try to open it, the scripts on the page will detect that you’re not logged in, and try to redirect you back to twitter.com/x.com. This is quite annoying!

This happens with JavaScript on the page, so you can get round it by disabling JavaScript. Two ways to do this:

  1. Disable JavaScript in your browser when you open the file, so none of the <script> tags get executed.

  2. Create a modified version of the webarchive file that doesn’t have any JavaScript <script> tags. Safari webarchive files are binary plists, so we can open them up, modify their contents, and repack them.

    Here’s a Python script that does just that:

    """
Create a copy of a Safari webarchive file that disables all the ``<script>`` tags.
"""

import pathlib
import plistlib
import sys


if __name__ == "__main__":
    try:
        path = pathlib.Path(sys.argv[1])
    except IndexError:
        sys.exit(f"Usage: {__file__} PATH")

    assert path.suffix == ".webarchive"
    nojs_path = path.with_suffix(".nojs.webarchive")
    assert nojs_path != path

    with open(path, "rb") as in_file:
        webarchive = plistlib.load(in_file)

    old_html = webarchive["WebMainResource"]["WebResourceData"]
    nojs_html = old_html.replace(b"<script", b'<script type="application/json"')
    webarchive["WebMainResource"]["WebResourceData"] = nojs_html

    with open(nojs_path, "xb") as out_file:
        plistlib.dump(webarchive, out_file, fmt=plistlib.FMT_BINARY)

    print(nojs_path)

    You could also grab a copy of the nojs_html and save it to a separate HTML file if that’s helpful.