Home / iPhone Tutorials and Tips

Manage and Sync Safari Bookmarks

We show you ow to create bookmarks, edit your collections and access them on all of your other iOS devices.

Browsing the internet on your iPhone is an intuitive experience thanks to Apple's excellent Safari app. Through this app you can access your favourite sites and there are a wide range of options available for bookmarking them.

Start off by tapping on the sharing icon (recognisable as an arrow coming out of a frame) and you will be presented with a set of options that enable you to create a bookmark and store it in your Bookmarks menu, transform a bookmarked page into its own app icon and place it on your Home Screen or simply tweet a link to your followers. If you are running iOS 5 and use other iOS devices then you can also take advantage of Apple's free cloud storage service, iCloud, to sync your bookmarks and access them on all of your devices. The process of setting this up is quick and easy and we will guide you through it in this tip.

Bookmarks

Once you have created bookmarks, you can also manage them through your device by tapping on the open book icon in safari. This allows you to browse your entire collection and create new folders in which to store bookmarks rearrange the order in which they are displayed.

Safari: Manage and Sync Bookmarks

  1. Adding a Bookmark:
    When you find a web page that you would like to bookmark, start by tapping the sharing icon at the bottom of the window.
  2. Rename and Create:
    Click 'Add Bookmark' then rename the bookmark to anything you want and choose where it will be stored by tapping on 'Bookmarks'.
  3. Add to Home Screen:
    Choose 'Add to Home Screen' to add bookmarks to your Home Screen as app icons so you can instantly launch Safari and jump to the bookmarked page.
  4. Syncing Bookmarks:
    Thanks to iCloud, you can sync your bookmarks across all of your iOS devices. To do this, launch your Settings app and then tap on the 'iCloud' section.
  5. Activate Bookmarks:
    Ensure that the slider next to the 'Bookmarks' feature is turned to the 'On' position and that this is the case on all of your iOS devices.
  6. Managing your Bookmarks:
    To manage your bookmarks, tap on the open book icon in Safari and then tap 'Edit'. You can now create, delete or rearrange folders and bookmarks.

Creating Bookmarks

Tapping the sharing icon in your Safari browser calls up a host of options

Creating Bookmarks
  • Add Bookmark:
    To Create a bookmark for a favourite site, tap 'Add Bookmark' and then rename or trim the title and choose a destination folder.
  • Add to Home Screen:
    Adding a bookmark to your Home Screen creates an app-style icon for it which, when tapped, will launch Safari and jump straight to the page.
  • Tweet:
    When Apple released iOS 5, it built Twitter into many of its core apps, allowing you to instantly tweet subject matter in-app, in this case web links.
  • Add to Reading List:
    Reading List is allows you to save pages to read offline later. When you add a page, you can access it via the open book icon.

Accessing your Bookmarks

Any bookmarks that you create can be accessed via the open book icon at the bottom of the Safari window. Admittedly, on iPhone, there is not much difference between storing a bookmark in the Bookmarks Bar or Meny. But if you are using an iPad, bookmarks stored in the 'Bar' will be displayed across the top of the windows.