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

Open Safari links quickly by putting them on your Home screen

iPhone home screen icons

Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images

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 September 26, 2018

The iOS Home screen contains icons that make it easy to open your favorite apps quickly. You can make icons to serve as direct links to your favorites websites in the Safari web browser.

Add icons to your favorite websites directly to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch Home screen so that you can launch them without having to open Safari.

How to Put Safari Icons on Your Home Screen

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

  2. Tap the Share icon at the bottom of the screen. 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 icon that will represent this website is a name field. Accept the suggested name or enter a different one.

  5. Tap Add at the top of the screen to save the new icon to the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch Home screen.

You'll see the new icon next to all your other app icons. You may need to scroll through your Home screens to locate it if you use several Home screens. Tap the icon to open Safari and go directly to the website you saved.

Make a Bookmarks Folder for Website Icons

Repeat the website-icon making process with other websites you want easy access to from the Home screen. If you have several website icons, you can place them in a folder for convenience. Do this by pressing and holding on one of the icons until all the icons start to wiggle. Then touch and drag one website icon on top of another website icon 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 the icons into the new Bookmarks folder.