Safari is the default web browser on iPhones and iPads, and so it’s understandable that a lot of people use it. But what’s not so understandable is why Apple doesn’t do more to make the Safari user experience better.
Thankfully we have jailbreak tweaks that can step up to the plate in ways that Apple doesn’t, and this means that if you’re jailbroken, you can take advantage of an add-on called SafariX by iOS developer 0xkuj to add features that you might want as a Safari user.
Among the top features of SafariX are:
- Tabs in portrait orientation — allowing you to quickly move between websites with just a tap thanks to tabs the normally only appear in landscape orientation
- Customize shortcuts buttons — you can customize what individual buttons in the Safari web browser actually do and increase the number of buttons that appear in the bottom bar
- Easy grouping — more easily access tab groups and move between them so that you don’t have to take the cumbersome route
- Slick Downloads manager — makes it easier to choose which app opens the files you download so that iOS isn’t the only thing making that decision
- See the full URL — you can now prevent a lot of potentially malicious websites by viewing only trusted URLs thanks to being to see the full URL instead of only a small snippet of it
Of the aforementioned features, you will see that it is possible to customize shortcut buttons. You can add and use any of the following buttons:
- Stock Apple buttons such as Back/Forward/Share/Bookmarks/Tabs
- Private/Regular and Desktop/Mobile site browsing modes
- Add to Reading or Bookmark lists
- Close all tabs/Close duplicate tabs/close current tab/Open a new tab
- Clear or show browsing history
- Paste and search instead of waiting for the past to happen before tapping search
- Show the tabs group interface and add items or move between them
- Multifunctional button that displays a menu with up to 10 more buttons
The developer notes in the tweak’s depiction page that the tabbed browsing in portrait orientation was a challenge to implement and that it only seems to work on iOS 15.1 and later.
Once installed, SafariX adds a dedicated preference pane to the Settings app where you can configure a few different options to your liking:
Things you can do here include:
- Toggle SafariX on or off on demand
- Enable or disable tabs
- Remove suggested app links
- Enable the Share button in downloads
- Enable haptic feedback for new tabs
- Display the full URL of websites
- Edit the buttons that appear in the bottom bar
- Restore all settings to their defaults
In the section deviated to the buttons that you can toggle on or off, the following options are available to you:
- Back
- Forward
- Share
- Bookmarks
- Tabs
- Add to bookmarks
- Add to reading list
- Clear history
- Close all duplicated tabs
- Close all tabs
- Close tab
- Downloads
- Multifunctional button
- New tab
- Next tab group
- Paste and search
- Previous tab group
- Private/Regular mode
- Request desktop/mobile site
- Search
- Show history
- Show tab group picker
For serious Safari users who don’t want to download an alternative web browser from the App Store because of Safari’s tight integration with iOS, SafariX makes it possible to have your cake and eat it too by boosting the native web browser’s feature set.
As a jailbreak tweak that gives users more out of a native app on their jailbroken device, SafariX is easy to recommend to iOS 15 and 16 users who want an improved native web browsing experience and is available for $1.50 from the YouRepo repository via your favorite package manager app.
If you’re not already using the YouRepo repository, then you can add it to your package manager app of choice by using the URL provided below:
https://www.YouRepo.com/
Are you going to be leveling up your Safari usage with the new SafariX jailbreak tweak? Let us know why or why not in the comments section down below.