Apple announced that they officially have two billion active iPhone users globally, which is an absurd amount of smartphones out in the wild. With every iPhone out there, whether you love it or hate it, they come pre-installed with Safari as the default browser. So if you have an iPhone from 2007, that means you’ve used Safari on iPhone for over 15 years (unless you’ve switched your browser). Most people are not aware of just how much you can do in Safari; Here are some features I think every Safari user should know about!
10 Safari Features You Wish You Knew Already [Video]
1. Moving the URL/Address Bar
When Apple released iOS 15, they added the ability to move the Safari address bar to the bottom of the display. The move was made for reachability and one-handed use, which is totally understandable, and was a change that was made by default. This means that everyone who updated to iOS 15 saw their address bar moving. But as a longtime Safari user, I wasn’t a fan of this change. Thankfully, Apple has added an option in Settings that allows you to move the address bar back to its rightful place
Settings > Safari > Tabs
2. Add any website to your home screen
If you’ve used an iPhone since the pre-App Store days like me, you’ll know this feature very well. Apple allows you to add a shortcut to a website on your Home screen. This feature has been around since the beginning – I remember when people used to make web apps and you could save them to your iPhone 3G’s home screen to make them look like they were native apps.
iOS 16 still allows for this if you need quick access to a certain webpage; The cool thing about this is that Apple hides the address bar, giving it the appearance of a real app. Try it with Instagram on your iPad, and you’ll know what I mean.
Safari > Share Button > Add to Homescreen
3. Search bar for your tabs
Did you know that if you scroll to the top of your tabs, a search bar appears? If you use 10 or 100 tabs at once, going to your tab menu and scrolling to the top lets you word-search your tabs.
4. Closing tabs based on time
You probably know that you can set up automatic deletion of iMessages in your settings; So if you can delete your messages from iMessage after a year, you can do the same with your Tab. You can set your tabs to be deleted on a daily, weekly or monthly basis from the Settings menu.
Settings > Safari > Close Tabs > Choose Time
5. Customize Your Safari Start Page
When you open Safari and have a new start page, there is some information that is shown to you, like recently viewed, security information and more. There is a way to customize your homepage with not only the information displayed but also the background image. If you scroll to the bottom of a new Safari page, there’s an Edit button that allows you to change the order of the information shown, as well as change the background image.
Start New Safari Page > Scroll Down > Tap Edit > Select Background Image
wrap up
As I mentioned above, Safari is by far one of my most used apps on the iPhone. Apple has slowly added more and more features over the years to give users a fully customized browsing experience, and it just keeps getting better. Be sure to watch the full video to see all the Safari features everyone should know about. I go into more depth and even show you how to use a Safari extension, which deserves its own post.
What is your favorite safari feature? What do you primarily use Safari for? Do you use Safari as the main browser on your iPhone, or do you use another browser like Chrome? Let’s discuss our favorite features in the comments below.
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