While this tip may seem a little trivial, it will most likely solve an annoyance that many of us have experienced when surfing the web on the iPad or iPhone.
When you're browsing in Safari and you accidentally close a tab, it can be a pain to try and find that URL again in your history or search recommendations. That's why there's a handy little option for opening recently closed tabs on iPhone and iPad.
One of the glaring features that Apple left out of Siri is the ability to integrate with and launch apps. You can do all sorts of things with your voice and Siri, but you can't use third-party apps (short of a few exceptions and the services Apple officially partnered with for launch) or open apps with a voice command.
Thanks to the widely undocumented world of iOS URL schemes, you can actually trigger app shortcuts with Siri on your iPhone 4S. While it's not the cleanest method, there are tons of possibilities for quickly launching apps with Siri. Let's take a closer look...
How many times have you realized you needed to continue your iPhone browsing session on your laptop or desktop PC? What about when you come across an app for your Mac that you want to download to your PC, not your iPhone?
Sure, there are plenty of options for downloading something to your iPhone or iPad, or even to Dropbox , but there is an unparalleled advantage to seamlessly transferring a link or webpage to your Mac. Whether you want to send a DMG, an installer package, a torrent, or a website that only supports Flash, your options are limited when you try to view them from an iOS app.
Luckily, there are several solutions that have sprung up over the past year. Pushing from a browser to an iPhone has been relatively simple for quite some time, but one-tap solutions to go from iOS to Mac are finally available. Read on for our list of creative services that offer you just that…
Although Safari may not be perfect, as far as truly native iPhone browsers go, it's all we've got. If one of your major problems with Apple's mobile browser is how long it takes to load, you're in good company.
It's Safari's built-in session saving feature that makes the browser so sluggish. In most cases, it will completely reload you're previous page you were on at launch. iOS doesn't have an option to disable this feature, but there might be a way around it...
In iOS 4.3, Apple has supposedly limited the speed of web apps added to the iPhone's home screen. Develepors and users have been reporting that web-based applications launched from an independent springboard icon are loading more than 2x slower than sites opened in Mobile Safari.
Meaning that, web apps/favorite sites launched from an icon shortcut aren't given any access to the Nitro Javascript engine that's baked into iOS 4.3. If Apple has intentionally hampered the performance of web apps in 4.3, such a move could been seen as a subliminal push to get people downloading more App Store apps.
If you've noticed lagging performance with your favorite web apps in iOS 4.3, there's an easy way to take advantage of Mobile Safari's full resources...
If you want to send the URL of a Web page you’re viewing to a friend, tap the Address Bar, then tap Share. A new e-mail message, containing the URL, will open in Mail; just choose a recipient(s), add any comments you want to include, and tap Send.
Page DownWhen not using a zoomed-in display, double-tap towards the bottom of the screen. The page will re-center around your tap. Make sure not to tap a link!
Jump to the top of the PageDouble-tap the very top of the screen, just below the time display to pop back to the top of the page. (Thanks John C)
Zoom onto a Single PictureDouble-tapping images in Safari zooms them to fit your iPhone display. If the picture is linked to a URL, this can prove a little tricky but it works great for non-linked images. Double-tap again to return to the unzoomed display. Using 2 fingers to double tap, and zoom a section of a web page will avoid the accidental clicking of links.
Zoom a ColumnYou can zoom text columns as well as pictures. Double-tap on the column to fit it to the display. Double-tap again to return out of the zoom. Not only does Safari zoom block-quoted text independently of regular text but if you move your finger after the first double-tap-to-fit, it interprets the next double-tap as a re-center page command rather than a return-to-previous-zoom. Smart.
Stopping a scrollAfter flicking a page to get it to scroll, you can tap the page at any time to stop that movement. Don't forget, you can also manually drag the screen display to reset the part you're viewing.
Manual ZoomThis is probably one of the most-advertised Safari features (along with the flip-the-phone-on-its-side-trick) but it's worth mentioning again. To zoom into a Safari page, put your thumb and forefinger on the screen and move them apart. To zoom out, pinch the fingers together after starting with them apart.
Examining the URLTo peek at a link's destination, touch and hold the link for a few seconds. You can also do this with images to see if they are linked. If a link appears and you don't want to activate it, just slide your finger away until the destination text disappears.
Locking the Scroll to One DirectionThe iPhone 'locks' your scroll to either vertical or horizontal only if the initial finger-slide is straight up/down or right/left enough. This can be very useful if you've got a skinny column of text with room on either side to get derailed. If not your initial scroll, using 2 fingers side by side will force vertical scrolling. Likewise 2 fingers stacked is horizontal.
Save ImagesSave images in Safari by tapping and holding on the image and you will see a “Save Image” button. Great feature if you want to use images you find online as your wallpaper.
Press & Hold For Alternate CharactersHold a letter for a popup of various versions of the character (i.e. to type España with the "ñ" simply hold "n" and simply slide/release to the appropriate character).
Click & Hold URL'sIn Safari, hold a link to see the URL and site name.
Enter Special Characters in Safari Address BarWhen you have selected the number keypad (@123) while typing text in the Safari Address bar, pressing the Shift Key, changes the symbols you can select. In other keyboards (for example the Google search text box, the Shift key is replaced with a second symbol option key (#+=) but this doesn't appear in the address bar. To access these symbols, just press Shift key and pick the character.
Changing Search Engine to YahooBy default, Safari uses the Google search engine when you enter search text. However, you can change it to Yahoo but selecting the Safari Option in the Settings application. Pick this option and select the Search Engine option to change it to Yahoo.