How to Save a Website to the Home Screen on Your iPad

Did you know you can save a website to your iPad's home screen and use it just like any app?  This is a great way to get quick access to your favorite websites, especially those you use throughout the day. This also means you can create a folder full of websites on your iPad, and you can even drag the website's app icon to the dock at the bottom of the home screen.  

When you launch a website from your Home Screen, you simply launch the Safari browser with a quick link to the website.

 So after you are done, you can either quit Safari or continue browsing the web as normal.  

This trick is especially helpful if you use a content management system (CMS) or another specialized website for work. 

Pinning a Website to Your Home Screen

1. First, go to the website you want to save to the home screen in the Safari browser.
2. Next, tap the Share button.  This is the button immediately to the right of the address bar. It looks like a box with an arrow coming out of it.  (Find out more about the Share button...)
3. You should see "Add to Home Screen" in the second row of buttons.  It has a big plus sign in the middle of the button and is right next to the "Add to Reading List" button.
4. After you tap the Add to Home Screen button, a window will appear with the name of the website, the web address and an icon for the website.  You shouldn't need to change anything, but if you want to give the website a new name, you can tap on the name field and enter anything you want.

1. Tap the Add button in the top-right corner of the window to complete the task.  Once you tap the button, Safari will close and you will see an icon for the website on your home screen.

What Else Can You Do With the Share Button?

You may have noticed a number of other options when you tapped the Share button in Safari.

 Here are a few really cool things you can do through this menu:

• Message.  Have you ever visited a web page or read an article and thought a friend might enjoy it?  You can use the Message option to send a link to the website to a friend via text message. 
• Mail.  This is similar to Message, but instead of sending a text message, you can email a friend the link.  This option brings up the normal compose email screen within the Safari browser, so you can type out a complete message to accompany the link.
• AirDrop.  This is one of those super cool features few people seem to know about on the iPhone and iPad.  AirDrop lets you quickly share files with people nearby so long as they have an iPhone or iPad.  They will usually need to be in your contacts list, although you can set AirDrop to detect any nearby device.  Their contact picture will show up in the AirDrop area (if they don't have a picture, it will show their initials) and you can tap the icon to share a website, photo or just about anything with them.  Find out more about AirDrop.
• Add to Notes.  This is for those occasions when you don't want to bookmark a website but you still want to save the link for later reference.   Add to Reading List is also a good option for this, but by adding it as a Note, you can get to the link from almost any device using icloud.com.  

• Facebook.  If you have your iPad connected to Facebook, you can quickly post a link to the article on your feed.  This also works with Twitter.  
• Add to iBooks as PDF.  This is one of the really cool hidden features of the iPad.  You can basically convert any web page to a PDF with this option.  This is great for really long articles, and because it copies everything in the web page, you will get all photos, images, and diagrams as well.
• Print.  This option is on the second row of buttons.  You will need to scroll over to see it.  If you have an AirPrint printer, you can quickly print out a web page.

• Request Desktop Site.  Another very useful feature.  If you hit a web page that stubbornly gives you a mobile-optimized and not-quite-fully-functional page, you can use this feature to request the desktop version.  Basically, Safari pretends to be a desktop version when requesting the page.  This feature would be more helpful if it was an on/off switch so you could turn it on semi-permanently, but it's nice even with its more limited use.  

Did you know: This is just one of many tricks you can do with your iPad.  Find out more neat things you can do.