How to choose where Favorites are saved in Safari

Safari for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Mac allows you to save any webpage as your Favorite. This lets you access these websites right from the Safari start page.

Safari ships with a default Favorites folder where the sites you add to favorites are stored. However, the location of the Favorites can be adjusted to your liking.

In this quick tutorial, we explain how you can designate any of your bookmark folders as Safari’s Favorites.

Favorites folder in Safari on iPhone

How’s this useful?

One reason this setting could make you more productive is by separating work and home content. You could, for example, set up two Favorites folders — one for work and the other for play — to switch between on a whim. Safari will instantly scan the new Favorites location and display appropriate website thumbnails when new tabs are created, or the search bar is interacted with.

Secondly, suppose you have a bookmarks folder for a long time in which you have added many websites. You can follow the steps below and instantly make it the Favorites folder. After that, all those added websites will appear on your Safari start page for quick access.

To select a bookmark folder as your new Favorites location, follow the steps below. Keep in mind that this has to be done separately on each iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Mac you own, as this particular setting does not sync via iCloud.

How to choose where Safari saves Favorites

Here are the steps for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

On iPhone and iPad

1) Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.

2) Tap Safari.

3) Tap Favorites under the General heading.

4) Select a bookmark folder to set as your Favorites.

Favorites folder settings for Safari on iPhone

5) Now, open Safari, and you will see that the websites of that selected folder are now shown on the start page under Favorites.

Two set of Favorites in Safari start page on iPhone

You can quickly access the websites added to the Favorites from the Safari start page when you create a new tab or while entering an address in the URL bar.

Related: How to use bookmark folders in Safari

On Mac

1) Launch Safari on your Mac.

2) Press Command + Comma (,) or click the word Safari from the menu bar and choose Preferences.

3) Click on the General tab.

4) Choose a custom folder for your Favorites in a drop-down menu next to the section labeled Favorites shows.

Favourites shows in Safari on Mac

Again, your Favorites will conveniently appear when you click Safari’s address field to enter a URL or run a search query or use the Safari Start Page.

And that’s it, folks. You can now designate any custom folder in Safari’s Bookmarks as your Favorites, like a boss.

Note that if your favorites folder on iPhone and Mac (or other devices) are different, then the new sites you add to favorites won’t reflect in the Favorites section of the other device. To address this, you can set the same bookmarks folder as the favorite on all your Apple devices.

For example, on my iPhone, a folder named iDB Daily is set as Favorites. On my Mac, the Favorites folder is set under Favorites shows. So, if I add a new favorite website on my iPhone, it won’t reflect in the Favorites section of my Mac. But I can always manually go to the iDB Daily bookmarks folder on my Mac to access this newly added favorite website. If someday I think that this is too much of a hassle, I can follow the above steps and set iDB Daily under Favorites shows on my Mac.

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