Make Safari on iPhone Launch Faster with a Blank Page

Have you ever noticed that when you launch Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, before you can really use the app it often has to refresh the last active web page? This slows down your browsing, and while on newer hardware it doesn’t happen too often and it’s not a terribly long delay, on the iPhone 3G and older iPod touch it’s dreadfully slow.

A simple solution to speed up Safari in iOS is to load a blank page by bookmarking one, here’s how to do this:

• Tap on Safari to launch the app
• Tap onto the URL field and type “about:blank” and then choose “Open” – this loads a blank page in Safari
• Now tap on the bottom Share arrow icon and select “Add to Home Screen” to create a bookmark
• Label this something like “New Safari” and tap on “Add”

You’ll now find a blank white Safari icon on your iOS home screen, drag this to where ever you’ll use it (even the iOS dock to replace Safari if you want), and now when you tap on that white bookmark, Safari will load almost instantly since it no longer has to refresh the last visited page and instead it just loads a blank white page.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a great tip for older hardware in particular, especially anyone coping with the painfully slow experience of iOS 4+ on an iPhone 3G or an older iPod touch.

The only real downside is that the white icon isn’t as attractive as the Safari default icon, this can’t be changed unless you’re jailbroken.

This tip comes from MacWorld via Carlos, thanks for the submission!