how do I remove Top Sites from my bookmarks bar?? I looked around and a lot of people were saying it wasn't possible, and many were answering the different question of "how do I remove items from my top sites?" (hate it when they change the question and then answer THAT)

I actually have it removed from one computer here but not another, and don't recall what I had to go through. The only option I see in safari is to change the number of top sites (6, 12, 18, but no zero!)

Have you read How do I get rid of top sites?.

I don't have Top Sites in my bookmarks bar but I can make a suggestion if the above doesn't help: Go to Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks. You may be able to find Top Sites there. If so, you should be able to delete it by selecting it and pressing Delete.

The contents of Top Sites are listed under Favorites on the Bookmarks menu.

I don't know how long this will be available but take a look. "how to make that thing circled in red go away:

http://imgur.com/SRigHSZ

Note that bookmarks is already opened up and does not show Top Sites in the list, for removal.

Switch to Lightning or Chrome? 😀

Seriously, I looked in com.safari.plist and found a key labeled "ProxiesinBookmarksBar" an array of 3 items and item 0 is Top Sites. You might try removing Top Sites from the array and see if that does what you want.

The best that I could find was that in versions of Safari circa 2012 (and for a few years after?) there was a "Bookmarks" tab in Preferences for Safari. In that tab was a checkbox to show/hide "Favorites" in the tool bar. That specific tab no longer exists in Safari Preferences.

Other discussions indicate removing the icon is no longer possible, and goes on to say "so quit your griping". I'd say gripe all you want, but it is probably there to stay for now.