iOS 8

How to add pull-to-refresh to Safari in iOS 8

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

For a large screen device like the iPhone 6 Plus or even the iPhone 6, it takes some serious thought when designing apps. That's because it's much more difficult to reach certain part of the screen using one hand, so developers have to design their apps with one-handed users in mind.

But where such thought may be lacking, a jailbreak tweak can go a long way towards enhancing the usability of certain apps. That's definitely the case with this latest tweak called SafariRefresh. It adds a simple pull-to-refresh mechanism to Apple's stock web browsing app, and the result is a much more usable refresh function on large screen devices.

Safari on iOS 8 found to support animated PNGs

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 29, 2014

Safari on iOS 8 has been found to support animated PNG images (APNG), a standard conceived as a replacement for animated GIF, as discovered by MacRumors on Monday.

The Animated Portable Network Graphics file format was proposed in 2004, but failed to take off as a replacement for the animated GIF file format widely used to embed short animations online.

Unlike animated GIFs, APNG files support 24-bit images and 8-bit transparency not available for GIFs.

Microsoft updates Bing Search app with translation widget in Safari and Notification Center

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 23, 2014

First demoed at WWDC 2014 back in June, Microsoft's Bing translation widget and custom actions for Safari and the Notification Center in iOS 8 is now available by way of an update to the free Bing Search app for the iPhone and iPod touch devices. Available free of charge in the App Store, the new Bing Search 5.0.1 also contains bug fixes.

As shown on the screenshots top of post, enabling the Bing Search Translation action in Safari requires that you bring up the Share sheet in Safari.

Awesome Screenshot now available as Safari extension on iOS 8

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 24, 2023

As our own Jeff told you before, Awesome Screenshot, a desktop web app for Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari, is arguably the best way to capture an entire web page as an image on OS X.

Thanks to the various extensibility features introduced in iOS 8, this nifty little utility is now available as a screenshot extension for Safari on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS 8.

Upon downloading the free app from the App Store, Awesome Screenshot will allow you to capture a screenshot of any webpage simply by choosing it in Safari's Share menu.

Not only can you capture images of web pages on mobile devices with ease, but also annotate and share them with others using Apple's stock sharing choices or a number of third-party Share extensions available in the App Store.

iOS 8 lets native apps tap into Safari’s AutoFill & Passwords for frictionless login experience

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 13, 2014

In addition to using your device’s iSight camera to scan in credit card information, Safari in iOS 8 makes it easy for third-party apps to tap into the browser's AutoFill & Passwords feature for hassle-free logins.

Provided a user has previously saved their username and password for a specific website using Safari's AutoFill & Passwords feature, a native iOS app is now permitted to retrieve this information and re-use it to authorize a user quickly and securely, bypassing the login screen altogether...

New in iOS 8 Safari: use your device’s camera to scan in credit card info

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 17, 2018

As folks continue to comb through the recently released iOS 8 beta, a new feature has been discovered in mobile Safari. When the updated browser detects a credit card field within a webpage, it offers to let the user scan their card with their device's camera.

Scanning your credit card automatically enters its information in the appropriate text fields, saving you from having to enter it manually. It takes just a moment, and it doesn't appear that websites will have to do anything special to enable the new feature...