Edit Safari’s Start Page

Learn how to edit Safari’s Start Page, including removing items from the start page and rearranging the Start page.

When you open a new tab in Safari, it opens to Safari’s Start Page. This Start Page shows your your favorite bookmarks, recently visited websites, your reading list, Siri suggestions, and sSafari windows from your other devices. You can edit this Start Page. You can remove any of these features, as well as rearrange how they are shown. See how to edit Safari’s Start page in this video for Safari on the iPad.

Video TranscriptIn this video, we’re going to look at how we can customize a Start Page in Safari on the iPad. Let’s go to my iPad.

Let’s open up Safari here. Now, if you’re not familiar with a Start Page, when you open up a new tab, what it does by default is open up to a Start Page, where you can select from your frequently visited websites, or your favorite bookmarks, or maybe even your reading list.

So let’s open up a new tab. I go up to the plus here, when I tap on this, I’m able to enter in a website. But in addition to that, what I’m able to do is select from one of my favorite bookmarks. I have my Frequently Visited Websites. I can select from any one of those. I can also view my Privacy Report, and I have my Reading List. If I had other devices open, I’d also be able to see what websites I’m on with those other devices, such as my iPhone or my Mac. This is what Apple calls the Start Page.

What we can do is we can customize what is shown on the Start Page. So let’s say I no longer want to view the Privacy Report. I know what Apple is doing. I know they’re trying to protect my privacy. I don’t want to see this privacy report. Whenever I create a new tab to go to a different website, or maybe I do not use the reading list. So I no longer want to see any of these reading list articles. Or maybe what I do is I want to have my reading list articles at the top. Maybe I use the reading list quite a bit. So I’d like to have my reading list up here above my Favorites.

Well, what we can do is we can edit this Start Page to add and remove these different features, as well as rearrange them. To do that, we go down to the very bottom and you’re going to see Edit. When I tap on that what I’m able to do is set what I want to show.

So we can see here, we have our Favorites, Frequently Visited, Privacy Report, Siri suggestions, Reading List, and iCloud tabs. So I no longer want to see my Privacy Report. I know it’s working, it’s just working in the background. I don’t need to see this on my Start Page. All I do is just go over to the right. I tap on the slider, and it turns it off. I want to move my Reading List here up above my Favorites. All I do is just take my Reading List here, these three lines here, and I drag it up and I place it above my Favorites. So now that is going to show first. I can even go and add a background image. So let’s go with this image here. We can see it applied that image already.

Once you have all of your Settings, you are also able to set, if you want to use it on all of your different devices. So any changes I make here while now also show on my other devices. So I have everything, how I want it set. From here I just tap on the X and now you’re going to see that my Reading List is up towards the top and I no longer have my Privacy Report.

Let’s open up a new Start Page. All I do is just go over to the plus and we can see it went straight to my Start Page. And again, it’s my new Start Page. I want to edit this. I swipe up and I tap on Edit.

So that’s how we can customize the Start Page on the iPad. Basically, we just go to a Start Page. We create a new tab. By default, it’s going to go to a Start Page. If we swipe all the way up, you’re going to see Edit. Tap on Edit, and from there you’re able to select what you want to see on the Start Page. You can also rearrange them. And then you can apply a background once you’ve made all your changes. If you want to sync it across all your devices, make sure it’s set to sync across all your devices. This is going to be at the top of that window. And any changes that you made will now be applied to any new Start Pages in Safari.

So that’s how we edit our Start Pages in Safari on the iPad.