Here’s how to bookmark a website on iPhone and iPad. Put a website bookmark on your iOS homescreen. Browsing the web on your iPhone or iPad is brilliant. Forget quibbles about the lack of Flash – use your fingers to scoot around the web with an Apple tablet and you’ll understand how the web is supposed to be. And catching up on the latest news on the move is a cinch with an Apple iPhone smartphone. There are some differences from the traditional desktop web browser that are not to the benefit of Apple portables, however. For one thing, typing a URL into the address bar on a portable touchscreen device will never be as easy as using a full-sized keyboard. But that doesn’t have to be a problem. Most of us visit the same few sites most of the time. And it is easy to set your favourite sites as bookmarks on your iPad and iPhone home page. Here’s how. (You may also want to browse our iPhone, iPad and Mac tips, and our smartphone tips.)
How to add bookmarks to home screen on iPhone and iPad
First, browse to the site for which you wish to make a bookmark. We’ve chosen, er, PC Advisor. (Click all images to enlarge them.)
Now hit the Share button: it’s the icon in the middle at the bottom of the page. It represents a page with an arrow coming out of it (as shown immediately below).
You’ll see nine icons, three rows of three. The middle icon in the middle row will be the favicon of the site you are on. Underneath is the message ‘Add to Home Screen’. Hit this icon.
This takes you through to the Add to Home page. You’ll see the site favicon on the lefthand side, and a text field to the right. This picks out the first few letters of the site’s description, and the contents of the field will be used on your phone- or tablet’s home screen as the description. In the case of PC Advisor, our site description starts with the words ‘Technology reviews…’ This is less than ideal as a two word description, so we deleted the text and changed it to ‘PC Advisor’ using the onscreen keyboard at the bottom of the page. When you are happy with the description click ‘Add’, in the top righthand corner of the screen.
Now when you go to your iPhone- or iPad’s homescreens you’ll see your chosen site’s bookmark. By defualt it will appear as the final icon in all of your home pages. To move it, hold down on the icon until all the icons on your home pages start jumping around with black crosses on their top lefthand corners. Then whilst still holding down drag the icon to the position you would like it to take, and release.
To delete your bookmark hold down on the icon until the crosses appear and tap the cross. You’ll be asked if you are sure you want to delete the bookmark – hit delete and it will disappear. Then hit the home button.
Matt Egan is Global Editorial Director of IDG, publisher of Tech Advisor, and a passionate technology fan who writes on subjects as diverse as smartphones, internet security, social media and Windows.
