If you use Safari as a browser on the iPhone, these 7 tips for faster navigation may help you.
iPhone Safari tips
Safari is an easy internet browser that you can use in different ways. There are a number of shortcuts that you can use to, for example, close tabs or view your history. Below we highlight some useful functions for you.
1. Open and close tabs
You can open a tab by tapping the tab icon at the bottom right of the screen and then choosing the + button, but it can also be done differently. Keep your finger pressed on the tab button and a window slides up. Select ‘New tab’.
To close all tabs at once, press and hold the icon and choose ‘Close X tabs’.
2. Back to the top
If you have scrolled far down and want to go back to the top of the website, you can swipe down. But it is faster to tap at the top of the screen of the iPhone, where the time and your carrier are. That way you are right back at the top of the page. You may have to tap twice if the address bar is not visible.
3. Forward and back
If you have clicked through a number of times from a page and you want to go back to where you started in one go, press and hold the back button ‘<' at the bottom left of the screen. You will now enter History, from where you can return to all the pages you came from. It also works the other way around. Press and hold the forward button '>‘ to see which pages you had previously open before going back.
4. Open closed app
It could happen that you accidentally close a tab that you didn’t really want to close yet. Fortunately, you can quickly undo that (especially if you don’t remember what you closed). To do this, go to the overview of tabs (tap the tab icon at the bottom right). Then hold down the + button at the bottom of the screen and the recently closed tabs come back into view.
Search for words
You can search for specific words on pages, just like on the desktop. To do that, tap the share button at the bottom of the screen. Then choose ‘Search on page’ in the bottom row of icons. Then enter the word you are looking for and the top one will be highlighted in yellow. You use the up and down arrows next to the search field to switch between the matches found. The search field also states how many of your keywords have been found on the page.
6. Save page to iBooks
A long article is sometimes not so pleasant to read on the mobile website. You can then tap the lines on the left in the address bar to show the reading view. If you prefer to save a story as a PDF to read in iBooks, you can do that too. Choose the share button at the bottom of the screen and choose ‘Save PDF to iBooks’ in the middle row of icons. For this you must of course have the iBooks app installed.
7. Save bookmark quickly
Creating a bookmark on Safari is very easy. Tap and hold the book icon at the bottom of the screen, then tap Bookmark to save the bookmark. You can also choose to add the page to the reading list or save it to shared links.
Read more about Safari
- Tip: This is how you set a different default search engine on your iPhone (28-3)
- Big Sur tip: this is how you set your own photo as the background for Safari (26-11-2020)
- macOS Big Sur: This is how you view website privacy reports in Safari (25-11-2020)
- Translating websites with your iPhone and iPad: that’s how it works (23-11-2020)
- Tip: Here’s how to use the improved Safari extensions in macOS Big Sur (21-11-2020)