Make Safari Load Faster In iOS With A Home Screen Shortcut

Whenever you open Safari on iOS, it tries to load your last session. This is sometimes really helpful, but other times can be annoying, since you have to wait for your old page to load. Here’s how to bypass that.

Dan Frakes over at Macworld shares a nice workaround to Safari’s built-in session saving (that, of course, you can’t turn off):

  1. Launch Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
  2. In the URL field, type about:blank and then tap Go to “open” that page…which will be completely blank.
  3. Tap the Share button (the one at the bottom of the screen that looks like a rectangle with an arrow).
  4. Tap Add To Home Screen to create a Home-screen bookmark for this blank page.
  5. In the dialog that appears, give the icon a descriptive name. (I chose New Page for mine.)

Essentially, you’re just creating a home screen bookmark for about:blank, which will open a blank page in Safari, letting you avoid waiting and get to surfing quicker. And, while the icon may be very bland, you can always change it yourself, even if you’re not jailbroken. Hit the link to read more.

Update: Lifehacker reader rootyb reminds us that these home screen shortcuts don’t get the added speed benefits of Safari’s latest version. We aren’t quite sure if the problem extends to the rest of your Safari session opened from that shortcut or only on that page, but it’s something to consider should you use this trick. Again, we hope Apple has a fix for this soon.

Open iOS Safari to a Blank Page [Macworld]


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