Safari is the default browser of these mobile operating systems for iOS and iPadOS. It works smoothly and quickly and in most cases you don’t have to worry about it. But there are certainly all kinds of Safari settings that you can get started with!
Safari for Apple’s mobile operating systems is a typical set-and-forget program for most users. You use it and luckily you don’t have to think about it. But if you look a little further, there are certainly interesting possibilities under the hood.
Clear Safari Browser Cache
For starters, it’s not a bad idea to clear Safari’s browser cache every once in a while. Just to clear all kinds of annoying cookies and other things from visited websites and ensure a fresh start. You do that through the app Institutions to start; then click in the list (left in case of the iPad) on Safari†To clear the cache, click on Clear history and website dataâ€
Experience shows that it is useful for this action to first close Safari and wait about ten seconds before starting it again after the deletion. If you don’t, Safari will crash if restarted too soon. No drama, but why make it difficult?
Customize Safari search engine and more
Now that you’ve arrived in Safari’s settings panel, it’s useful to immediately look at the other options available. This way it is possible to Search engine to choose a different copy than the standard Google, if you need it. Perhaps the most interesting alternative here is DuckDuckGo, which divides searches across different search engines, but is completely anonymized. Always a pleasant thought, that last one.
Through Fill in automatically you can have various data – including credit card details – filled in automatically. These options are disabled by default, because they can also cause problems. If you use your iPad or iPhone lending it to a child, for example, who then enthusiastically starts shopping with your card, that is probably not useful.
Also check whether the default storage location under Downloads your iPad (or iPhone). Only if you have a device with very limited storage space (and/or little free storage space) should you consider iCloud as a target. The disadvantage of this is that the online storage then fills up very quickly. Moreover, you actually have to download one more time to actually be able to use the things stored there.
Tabs: old or new style
below TABS you will find the option to switch between the traditional and new tabs view introduced with iOS/iPadOS 15. Not everyone is charmed by the latter ‘improvement’, which is why Apple ultimately gave the choice.
The options under PRIVACY AND SECURITY pretty much speak for themselves. We advise you to leave the default settings here. That provides a high degree of privacy while the final browsing experience hardly suffers at all.
Camera and microphone
There are some nice options below WEBSITE SETTINGS to find. Especially on the larger iPad screen, it can be interesting to experiment with the zoom level. A little less than 100% usually still produces perfectly legible texts, but ensures that more of the site itself is shown in the image. Saves some scrolling again!
Through Material Blocks you will see a lot less intrusive advertisements. It is practical that you both Camera if Microphone can block for use in Safari. It is recommended to block both devices in Safari by default.
Prevents it from being misused; in case it is really necessary, you can always (temporarily) turn those things back on. In a few cases, for example, you have to turn them on in order to be able to video conferencing via a web app intended for that purpose.
Keep your location to yourself
The option we recommend under Location to choose Ask†Turning it off permanently is also an option. This prevents websites from being able to find out your exact position, instead a ‘somewhere near’ location is passed on. In most cases, this information is more than sufficient for the functioning of a website.
Except for the copies such as online navigation, but you can in any case wonder what the use is on an iPad or iPhone. After all, there are great apps for that. In short: share your precise location as little as possible. Just because it’s not necessary.
Targeted deletion of website data
Finally we come to Advanced†There are interesting things to find below, but be very careful with it. For starters, there’s the category Website data†Here you will find a list of websites whose data has been saved. In most cases the following applies: just leave it alone and don’t touch it. However, if you do not always want to delete the entire browser cache – including this website data – you can remove specific components here. The advantage is that specific settings of frequently visited sites that you trust remain and you can manually pick out the bad apples.
To clear site data click the button Change top right and then the red – for the unwanted one. The options web inspector and Remote automation lets you out under normal circumstances, really only interesting for developers. javascript must – also under normal circumstances – be switched on.
Experimental Features
Last in the list is the option Experimental Features†As the name suggests, these features are truly experimental. If you are going to turn things on or off here, make a note of what you have done. In case of problems you can easily restore everything back to the original settings.
As you can see, Apple has turned on some of the switches. Don’t be surprised if things change here after an update of iOS or iPadOS or things that were turned on are turned off again and vice versa. What Apple itself turns on will generally not cause any problems; turning it off usually results in a slightly less user-friendly experience. Turning things off is (of course) an option, but you have to be careful.
If a video on a particular website doesn’t play, you could try to WebRTC H265to enable codec. Just to give an example. Because it is difficult to estimate how stable this experimental code is, it is best to turn these options off ‘after use’. But for anyone who knows what he’s doing, there may be interesting things in between.
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