Add, Remove, and Rearrange Start Page Categories

Learn how to add, remove, and rearrange Start Page categories in Safari on the iPhone

Did you know you could customize what is show on Safari’s Start page? What is a Start page? When you first open a new web page, and it is not pointing at a website, Safari opens to it’s Start Page. this page has your Favorite websites, frequently visited websites, privacy report, reading list, and more. You can set what you want to show and how you want it to show on this Start Page in Safari. See how to customize the Start page in this video for Safari on the iPhone.

Video TranscriptIn this video, I’m going to show you the different start page options we have with Safari on the iPhone. Let’s go to my iPhone.

So I’m in Safari here, and let’s go and open up a new page, a new blank page. When I open up a new blank page, what it does is it opens up to a Start Page. To do that, I just tap on the double squares here. This shows me all of my different windows or tabs. I go over to the plus here, and I’m looking at a blank web page, my Start Page.

Up at the top, we have my Favorites. So I can go to any one of my favorite websites here. I also have Frequently Visited websites. These websites will change depending on how often I visit a specific website. I have my Privacy Report. And when I swipe, I also have Siri Suggestions. I have my Reading List. Any articles that I’ve added to my reading list will show here. And then I also have access to the different pages I have on my other devices that are signed in with the same iCloud account. So I have an iPad where I’m signed in with my iCloud account. These are all the different pages that I have open on that iPad.

Now, what I can do is I can edit the Start Page. Maybe I no longer want to see my reading list. I don’t use the reading list, or I don’t want to see Siri Suggestions, or what I want to do is rearrange how these are on my Start Page. I go back and forth between my iPad and my iPhone quite a bit, so I’d like to have my web pages from my iPad show closer to the top.

Well, to do that we just tap on Edit here. And from here, I can go and edit what is on my Start Page. I can turn on and off Favorites, Frequently Visited, the Privacy Report, Siri Suggestions, Reading Lists, and iCloud tabs. And then I can also set if I want to have a background image. You’re also going to see, I can rearrange them.

So I don’t use Siri Suggestions. I’m going to turn this off. I also don’t use my Reading List here. I turn that off. There’s no reason for me to show it on my Start page if I don’t use it. And really I don’t pay too much attention to the Privacy Report. I know it’s doing its job in the background. That’s all I need to know. So let’s go ahead and turn that off. Now, what I want to do is I want to move my iCloud tabs up towards the top. To do that, we just take these three lines and I drag it up and let’s place a right below my Favorites. The last thing I want to do is make sure that this syncs across all my different devices. So any changes I make here are going to be made on my other devices, like my iPad. So I have this turned on. These changes that I’ve made are going to be applied to my iPad as well. Now, all I need to do is just tap on the X.

And if we look you’re going to see, I have my Favorites. And then I also have my web pages from Safari, and then below that I have my Frequently Visited. I no longer see my Siri Suggestions. I no longer see the Privacy Report.

So that’s how you can edit the Start Page in Safari on the iPhone. The Start Page is what shows when you open up a new web page or a blank web. By default, you’re going to see a number of different categories. This includes your Favorites, Frequently Visited, your Privacy Report, Suggestions, as well as your Reading List. What you can do is you can edit what is shown on the Start Page. You can turn on and off those different categories and rearrange them. To do that you just go down to Edit at the bottom. Once you make your changes, if you have iCloud syncing on, those changes will be made across all your different devices.

So that’s how you can edit your Start Page in Safari on the iPhone.