Make a Safari Shortcut on Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch Home Screen

Open Safari links quickly by placing them right on your home screen

Safari logo on iPhone

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by Scott Orgera
Scott Orgera has been a tech journalist since 2007. He has 25+ years' experience as a programmer and QA leader and several Microsoft certifications.
Updated March 14, 2019

The iOS home screen includes icons that make it easy to open your favorite apps quickly. You can also create icons that directly open your favorite websites in the Safari web browser.

How to Put Safari Icons on Your Home Screen

  1. Open Safari and navigate to a website you visit frequently.

  2. At the bottom of the screen tap the Share icon (it resembles a box with an upward-pointing arrow).

  3. Scroll across the bottom row of icons in the Sharing window and tap Add to Home Screen.

  4. Next to the new icon is a name field. Accept the suggested name or enter one you like better.

  5. At the top of the screen, tap Add to save the new icon to the home screen.

You'll now see the new icon next to all your other icons. If you use several home screens, you may need to scroll through them to locate it. To use the icon, just tap it to go directly to your saved website in Safari.

Make a Bookmarks Folder for Website Icons

If you want easy access to several of these bookmarks, you can repeat the website-icon making process with other websites and save them all in one folder. Do so by pressing and holding one of the icons until they all start to wiggle. Then touch and drag one website icon on top of another to create a folder titled Bookmarks. Add other website icons to the same folder by pressing and holding them until they wiggle and then dragging and dropping them into the Bookmarks folder.