Learn how to pin Safari tabs on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac so that you can quickly get to your favorite websites anytime.
Safari allows you to “pin” a website to keep it close at hand. I usually pin websites I visit frequently, such as Gmail and social media sites. Pinned tabs are remembered across sessions, but you can unpin them at will.
Once you have pinned a site, it will remain pinned even if you close Safari and reopen it later or restart your device.
On iPhone and iPad
1) Launch Safari and visit the website if it isn’t already open.
2) Swipe up from the bottom URL address bar to see all your open tabs. You can also tap the three-dot button, then tap All Tabs.
3) Touch and hold the website tile and select Pin Tab.
4) You can view all pinned tabs at the top of the all tabs section. To unpin a tab, just touch and hold the thin pinned tab, then select Unpin Tab.
On Mac
- Open Safari and visit the website.
- Click Window > Pin Tab from the top menu bar.
You can also right-click or Control-click over the tab name and select the Pin Tab option.
Or, click and hold a tab name and drag it all the way to the left until it shrinks and only the website icon is displayed.
You will see all your pinned tabs in the top-left corner of Safari. Click their icon to visit. Or, Control-click to unpin.
Opening links inside pinned tabs
Website links open either in the same tab (example) or a new tab (example), but external website links followed from a pinned tab always open in a new tab.
For instance, if you pin your favorite iDownloadBlog story in Safari and follow one of the internal links from that pinned tab, it will open in the same tab (if you don’t prefer this, you can configure Safari to always open all links in new tabs).
But if you follow an external link instead, Safari will always open it in a new tab, even if the website creator has specifically forced a link to open in the current tab.
Pinned tabs stay across Safari window
For convenience, pinned tabs appear in all Safari windows. However, tabs pinned in a standard window won’t appear in a newly-created private window.
Pining tabs in a private Safari window
You can pin tabs while browsing the web privately in a private Safari window, but there are two noteworthy things worth pointing out.
Firstly, while pinning a site in a private window makes it appear across all private windows, your private pinned tabs are gone forever if you close all private windows or quit and reopen Safari.
However, websites pinned in a private-browsing session in Safari on iPhone or iPad remain pinned even after closing the private-browsing window or quitting and relaunching Safari.
Pinned tabs don’t sync over iCloud
Unlike your bookmarks, favorites, and other settings, your pinned Safari tabs don’t sync across your Apple devices. This means that any websites you’ve pinned in, say, Safari for Mac, won’t be accessible on your iPhone, iPad, or another Mac.
Pinned tabs in tab groups
You can even pin tabs inside tab groups. Just create a new tab group, and start pinning sites there using the instructions in this tutorial. Anytime you return to this particular group of tabs, your pinned websites will be there for you.
In addition to pinning, you can also bookmark important websites to save them for later. For even quicker access, consider marking Safari websites as favorites!