Mobile Safari Tips and Tricks

This Tips and Tricks section is a compilation of the hidden features in the Safari browser for iPhone and iPod touch. Documenting these hidden shortcuts, will save you some time and hopefully make surfing Safari on your Apple mobile device more fun.

Navigating Websites:

Show the URL Touch and hold any link for a few seconds to show the destination URL. It works on linked images too. From here you can also Open the link in a New Page, Copy the URL to your iPhone clipboard, or Add the URL to your Reading List in Safari.
Page Pown Double-tapping an unlinked portion on the bottom of the screen will re-center around your tap.
Move to Top Tapping the menu bar in Safari on your iPhone (top of the screen, where the Time is shown) will automatically scroll you to the top of the page.
Zoom on text Double-tap on any text column to have it zoom it and fit the screen. Double-tap again to return zoom out.
Pinch Zoom Use your thumb and forefinger and move them apart on the screen. Squeeze or Pull apart to zoom in and out.
Scrolling Pages. By default Safari hides the scrollbars on the page, until you start scrolling with your fingertips. Use your fingers (one or two) to drag pages up or down. Flick up or down to scroll faster. Scrolling is locked to go either vertical or horizontal. Tap the page at any time to stop the scrolling.

Images

Save images Tap and hold on any image for a few seconds. A menu will slide up that includes two options: Save Image or Copy. Tap Save Image and the photo will be saved to your iPhone Camera Roll and synced with iCloud. Tap Copy and you will be able to paste the image into other apps including MMS and Emails.
Zoom images Double-tapping images will zoom the picture to fit your iPhone display. Double-tap again to return to the original size.

Search

Searching In Page You can search for text in any page in Safari. Just start typing in the Google search box on top of the page. You will see a section in the search results headlined “On This Page” with the number of matches found for the keyword on the current website’s text. Tap to start going through all instances of that word highlighted in yellow. Use the Left and Right arrows to navigate through the found matches. Tap Done to return to remove out of the page search modal.
Changing Search Provider The default search engine is Google but you can change it. Go to Settings > Safari > Search Engine and choose from either Google, Yahoo! or Bing.

Bookmarks and more

Basic Bookmarking To bookmark any page tap the arrow button on the bottom toolbar. From here you can add the page to your Safari bookmark and choose what if any folder it should be filed under. You can also store the page in your Reading List if you want to catch up on it later.
Saving to Home Screen If you visit a website all the time, you can make a quick shortcut icon to that webpage on your HomeScreen as an icon. To do this, tap the arrow on the toolbar and choose “Add to Home Screen” form the slide up menu. Give it a name and tap the Add button. Some websites will also provide you with a custom “app” icon so that your bookmark will look like a regular app on your iPhone home screen. You can delete these types of bookmarks simply like any other app, by tapping and holding, then hitting the black X button.

Typing

Suggested Contractions To get popular contractions filled in automatically just add a third repetitive letter to get Safari to suggest the contraction word. Examples include “helll” -> “he’ll” , “welll” -> “we’ll”, “weree” -> “we’re” etc.
Keyboard Switching Press the space bar from the .123 keyboard to return to the alpha keyboard. This can be good when you just need a number or a period. If you have the iPhone 1.1.1 update you can simply double-tap the space key to get a period.

Advanced Safari Settings

Passwords & AutoFill Settings > Safari > AutoFill allows you to enable/disable the ability for Safari to remember the passwords you use to login to various websites. This can be good to save you time, but can be bad if you ever lose your iPhone and have not set a passcode lock for it. If you have your own contact info in your Address Book, you can choose this from the Use Contact Info area here and Safari will automatically fill out forms for you on websites to save time.
Private Browsing Turn on Private Browsing, and Safari will not keep a history or store cookies on your device for the pages you visit. Once turned on you will notice the chrome of the Safari app turns black. Note that you will not be able to log into websites when using this mode since they require cookies. Access this option form Settings > Safari > Privacy > Private Browsing > On.
Clearing your history and cache Tap Clear History or Clear Cookies and Data to erase your borrowing history from the iPhone or iPad. This will not remove any stored passwords you may have had, see above.
Website Data Go to Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data and you will see a list of all the various domain names that have data and copies stored on your device via Mobile Safari. Tap the Edit button to remove individual entries per website, or scroll to the bottom and tap the Remove All Website Data button. Note: Removing Website Data using the previous step will also do the same thing as here, but this option allows you to remove individual cookies for specific websites, while keeping other ones.