If you find yourself frequently visiting a website or using a web app on your iPhone or iPad, it’s easy to add a shortcut icon directly on your Home screen using Safari that you can quickly tap to launch the site. Here’s how.
Add a Website to Your iPhone Home Screen
First, open Safari and navigate to the website you’d like to put on your iPhone’s Home screen. Once there, make sure you can see the navigation toolbar by tapping once near the bottom of the screen, which will make it appear.
On the navigation toolbar at the bottom of the screen, tap the Share icon (the rectangle with an upward arrow).
A Share menu will appear at the bottom of the screen. Use your finger to pull it up and swipe through the list. Tap “Add to Home Screen.”
A menu titled “Add to Home Screen” will appear. Use this menu to name your new Home screen web icon anything you’d like using the onscreen keyboard. Once you’re done, tap “Add” in the top-right corner of the box.
The icon for the website will appear on your Home screen. Any time you’d like to use it, just tap on the shortcut as if it were a regular app. Safari will automatically open and load the website.
Add a Website to Your iPad Home Screen
On your iPad, open Safari and navigate to the website you’d like to put on your Home screen. Once there, make sure you can see the navigation toolbar by tapping once near the top of the screen, which will make it appear.
On the navigation toolbar at the top of the screen, locate the Share icon (the rectangle with an upward arrow). Tap on it.
A Share menu will appear on the right side of the screen. Tap “Add to Home Screen.”
Next, a pop-up titled “Add to Home Screen” will appear where you can name your new Home screen icon anything you’d like. Once you’re done, tap “Add” in the top-right corner of the box.
The icon for the website will appear on your iPad’s Home screen. Any time you’d like to visit the site, just tap on the shortcut. Safari will automatically open and load it up.
More About the Web Shortcut Icon
The website icon we created with Safari looks and behaves like a regular app icon on the iPhone’s or iPad’s Home screen. You can rearrange it along with other apps, add it to a folder, or even drag it to the Dock.
You might notice that some websites have Home screen icons that seem perfectly tailored to the iPhone or iPad interface. That’s because these sites specifically created an image for this purpose and defined it in their website’s code. Otherwise, your iPhone or iPad will generate a tiny thumbnail of the website to use as its icon.
So far, only Safari can create shortcut icons like this. And since Apple doesn’t let you change your default browser, the sites always load in Safari, as well. Still, it’s a handy way to speed up your iPhone or iPad experience.
