Yes, the Start Page (to use its Apple-given name) is utilitarian, and most of us only stay there briefly on our way to more interesting areas of the web, but a beautiful rest stop that serves your needs is far more enjoyable than one with blank white walls and seven disorganized convenience stores. In Safari, hit the plus button to open the Start Page. Scroll all the way to the bottom and hit Edit to bring up all available customization options—you’ll see a toggle switch for Background Image at the very end. Make sure it’s activated and tap to choose one of nine preset graphics or one of your photos from your device. If you go for a shot from your personal collection, you may have to try a few images to find one that works well with everything else on the Start Page. Something that is either very dark or very light (or has clearly delineated areas of both) should contrast nicely, so your links don’t blend into the background. Safari will also use only the vertical or horizontal middle of your image (depending on your phone’s orientation), so you should keep that in mind as well.
How to reorganize Safari’s Start Page
Shared with You
If you get a lot of links from people in Messages, this is where they all end up, and they display in chronological order. Tap Show All to show… 24 (at most)… and Show Less to show… less than 24 (four at most). To remove something from this group, long-press on it, then hit Remove Link. Those, of course, are the basic options, but it’s worth doing a little more for full customization. Let’s take a look at each category in turn. One useful feature here is hidden behind the gray bubble with the contact’s name inside it. Tap the sender’s name to bring up the chat where they shared the link, and touch anywhere in the white space around the preview to go directly to that spot in the conversation. This can be useful if you’ve forgotten the context for a specific link.
Favorites
It seems that for as long as the internet has existed, we’ve had the ability to “favorite” certain pages that we frequently return to. On Safari, you can do so by tapping the share icon (an arrow pointing up out of a square) and choosing Add to Favorites. The other option here is “Add Bookmark,” which is useful if you’ve created folders within Favorites (if not, we’ll get to that). While “Add to Favorites” will dump the page into the main Favorites area, you’ll need to choose Add Bookmark and select the proper destination to get it into a subfolder. Once inside the Favorites editing window, you can delete entries via the red minus button they each have, rearrange the list by pressing and dragging the three lines next to each one, or tap the right-pointing arrow to edit the name, URL, or folder location of an individual link. You can also long-press on a link from the Start Page to edit its name, address, and location. To edit your Favorites, tap the bookmarks icon (an open book) on any open Safari tab, then choose Favorites. If you’re just looking to clean house, drag any item all the way to the left to delete it immediately; drag it part-way to unveil a Delete button if you want to think about it for a moment. For more granular control, tap Edit. Press New Folder in the editing window and you can create a repository for numerous Favorites, though only the first nine will show on the Start Page until you open the folder. You can rearrange these from the editing window, but you can also open the folder on your Start Page, long-press on any icon, and drag it a short distance in any direction to shrink it into a movable piece you can place between two other icons.
Reading List
When you want to save something to read later, just stash it here. From any open Safari tab, tap the share icon (the square with an upward arrow) and hit Add to Reading List. To edit this list from the Start Page, long-press an item and tap Delete to remove it. To do more, touch the bookmarks icon (an open book), go to Reading List and swipe right to mark something as read or unread, and sort the list by choosing Show Unread or Show All. You can also tap Edit and select items to delete or save to be available offline. You can mandate offline reading for everything on the list by opening the Settings app, going to Safari and activating the switch next to Automatically Save Offline.
