Most people use the Safari app every day, it’s the built-in web browser for Apple’s iOS. It’s a fairly straightforward and easy to use app but there are a few menus that can make some things easier and quicker to use. Most of these menus are accessed by long pressing the link but some can also be accessed by using force touch.

Links in Webpages

Pretty easy, right? You see a link in a page and you click on it. But, did you know there are more options if you long press the link? When you long press a link you have the following options: Open, Open in New Tab, Add to Reading List, Copy or Share.

This menu can also be accessed on an iPhone by using force touch and sliding up. If you are on an iPad you will also have the option to Open in Split View.

Images in Webpages

Ever see an image on a website you liked and wanted to save it, maybe make it your background? To save an image simply long press the image and this will give you a menu with the option to Save Image or copy it to you clipboard. If the image is also a link it will give you the link options listed above.

This menu can also be accessed on an iPhone by using force touch and sliding up.

Bookmarks

Simply tapping on the bookmarks icon in the bottom toolbar will pull up your favorites and bookmarks. But long pressing this icon will give you an easy option to add a bookmark to the webpage you are currently on or add it to your reading list.

Back/Forward

Here are another set of buttons that you probably use all the time. Did you know they had a hidden menu? When you long press either the forward or back button it will pull up a history of that particular tab you are browsing on.

Tabs

The tabs button is the easy way to access a preview of all your open tabs, located in the bottom toolbar on the far right. Ever suddenly realize you have WAY too many tabs open? When you long press the tabs you get a few options, one of them being “Close All Tabs”. Other options you are presented with are: Close this Tab, New Private Tab & New Tab.

Add Tab

Ever accidentally close out a tab you wanted to keep open? Now you have to either remember what page you had open or go back through your history. Or, you can long press the + (New Tab) button. When this is long pressed it pulls up a menu that shows you all your recently closed tabs.

Done (Tabs)

Another way to close out all your tabs is to long press the “Done” button in the tabs views.

Reload

Most websites have multiple versions, a desktop version and a mobile version. When you visit from an iPhone or an iPad it will try to serve you up the mobile version. Sometimes the mobile version lacks features from the desktop version and can be a little frustrating. One way to get around this is to long press the reload button.

When you do this it brings you a menu that allows you to “Request Desktop Site”. This will attempt to reload the website while asking the server to show the full desktop version instead of the mobile version.

Reader View

Safari has a really cool mode called “Reader View”. This takes a website and isolates only the text and turns it black and white making it easy to read. If there is a website you are always activating Reader Mode on a specific website you can automate this. Long press on the reader icon (in the left in the URL bar) and you can choose to have reader mode automatically activate on a particular website or on all websites.

Search Bar

The URL/search bar in Safari is an amazing tool with the ability to both go to an address or perform a search. One hidden menu is “Paste and Go”. If you long press the URL bar you have the option of whatever you have copied to you clipboard can be pasted and immediately acted on. If it is a URL it will send you straight there. If it is simply words then a search will be performed. This can save you a few extra taps when using Safari.

Battery life. It’s something we all consciously and subconsciously think about with all our devices but especially our phones. There’s nothing like that sinking dreadful feeling you get when you look down at your phone and it’s less than 20% and you have no way to charge it. This post will give you tips on how what to do in that scenario as well as how to get your battery to last longer day-to-day and also how to extend the life of your battery.

Similar to having a view to manage your storage, iOS has a menu to view your battery usage. This menu shows you what apps have used the most battery in the last 24 hours as well as over the last 7 days. From here it will give you a good idea of where a good portion of your battery is going, exactly how much of your battery is being drained from all that Facebook browsing.

Getting to this menu is easy, simply go to Setting>Battery. Once the menu loads it will order the apps by percentage battery used. Next to “Last 24 hours / Last 7 days” there is a little clock, tap this to activate a more detailed menu showing time on screen and time in the background.

1. Background App Refresh

If you take anything away from this article hear this: **Stop force closing all your apps.** This is a huge myth that has perpetuated over time from person to person and is actually worse for your battery then just leaving them be. Not to be too detailed about it but almost immediately when you leave an app it goes in to a deep freeze. If you launch it back up soon after it will pick up where you left off as it is loaded into your phones RAM. Otherwise if you don’t use it for a while it goes away on it’s own.

The real battery drain is a feature called “Background App Refresh” which does what it sounds like, it launches an app in the background so it stays up to date when you want to open it. Sounds great unfortunately it allows many apps significant power drain. To turn this feature off simply go to Settings>General>Background App Refresh and from there you can toggle it off for individual apps or off altogether.

2. Mail Fetch

Having your e-mail accounts on your device can be super convenient (or a little annoying always having e-mails pop up). The more mail accounts you have and the more often they are updating the more your battery drains. To change the retrieval settings for the mail accounts go to Settings>Mail>Accounts>Fetch New Data. The option that uses the least amount of battery will be setting ‘Fetch’ to ‘Manual’. When you set this option your phone will only check for mail when you launch the mail app.

If the option for ‘Push’ is available that is generally not too battery intensive. Instead of the phone check with the e-mail server to se if there is any new mail, the e-mail server will just send the mail to the phone when it arrives. If ‘Push’ is not available then you will want to set ‘Fetch’ as least often as possible.

3. Location Services

Location services are a very useful feature, I for one use an app called Waze very day to see if there is traffic along my route to and from work. Different apps use your location to give you recommendations based on where you are. To manage location services go in to Settings>Privacy>Location Services and from here you can manage when or even if certain apps are able to access you location.

At the bottom of the menu there is a menu called System Services. From this menu you can toggle system location services su as location based ads. Some of these you will want to leave on such as setting time zone. One last menu deeper is an option that is a pretty big battery drain, ‘Frequent Locations’. Turn this off and it will help your battery life pretty drastically.

4. Display Settings

Just having your display on at all drains your battery, the screen and backlight draws more power than almost anything else on the phone. Keep your phones backlight as low as tolerable to save much battery power. Have your phone set to lock in as short a time as possible. These options can be managed under Settings>Display and Brightness.

One more display setting you can turn off to save battery will be a personal preference. This setting will turn off a lot of the fancy transition graphics going from app to app and back to the home screen. To turn this off go to Settings>General>Accessibility>Reduce Motion.

5. Push Notifications

Getting push notifications all the time can be a big battery drain. Piggy-backing on the screen draining power, every time you get a notification your screen turns on which drains just a little more power. To manage what apps get notifications and where you see them go to Settings>Notifications. From you here you can turn notifications on or off, set whether they appear in the lock screen or see how they appear on the screen, as banners or pop-ups.

6. Spotlight Indexing

Your iPhone keeps an index of all your devices contents, e-mails, messages, contacts, everything. Every so often your iPhone will re-index to check for anything new, any changes. Unfortunately there is no way to straight up disable Spotlight but you can choose what it indexes. Simply go in to Settings>General>Spotlight Index and you can turn off whichever apps you don’t need to be able to search through.

7. Data Network

Without data your phone would be nearly useless but your phone uses a different amount of power depending on whether it’s using wifi of LTE. Using your phone on wifi will use the least amount of battery and using your phone on LTE will use the most amount of battery. (Using your phone on wifi will also use less of your phones data plan, but that’s a story for another time.)

When you are out and about and are not using wifi, it is best for battery life if it is turned off and not searching around for networks to join. Worst case scenario if you need to drain every ounce of power from your draining battery it is also recommended to turn off your LTE. You can do this by going to Setting>Cellular>Cellular Data Options and toggle LTE off.

8. Low Power Mode

This is an option you can enable sooner but will automatically prompt you when you get down to 20%. Low Power Mode is a battery saving mode you can put your phone in to. It will automatically disable a few power hungry background features (most of which are listed above). According to Apple, low power mode limits the following features:

Email fetch
"Hey Siri”
Background app refresh
Automatic downloads
Some visual effects
Auto-Lock (defaults to 30 seconds)

9. Ambient Temperatures

Batteries can be greatly affected by ambient temperatures, too cold and it can’t work, too hot and it drains quickly. If you’re ever had you phone out in the winter and it turned off before it ran out of battery, this is why. The recommended operation temperatures for an iPhone are between 32º to 95º F. Your iPhone battery heats up while charging, too. To keep it cooler while charging it is recommended to take it out of it’s case, the case can insulate the phone and trap heat allowing the phone to get warmer than it should.

10. Charging Habits

Speaking of charging, there are some habits to follow to get the most life out of your battery. First and foremost, only use Apple approved charging cables and charging blocks. Typically, Apple approved equipment follows what Apple classifies as MFI or Made For iPhone. Low quality and cheap stuff can cause major problems, even going so far as to short out your phone causing it to catch fire. Now that rarely happens but you still want to be careful.

Another thing you can do to help the longevity of your battery is to let it drain as much as possible (down to below 10-20%) and leave it on the charger until it get’s back up to 100%. Now, it is not necessary to do this every time, battery technology has greatly improved over the years. If you need to occasionally only charge it a bit to top it off, go right ahead.

10 iOS Safari Tips: Hidden Menus