Open Safari Links in the Background on iPhone & iPod Touch

Aug 17, 2012 - Leave a Comment

Safari

Safari on iPhone and iPod touch can be set to open new links in the background, a behavior that closely represents opening links in new tabs on the desktop or iPad. This lets you continue to browse the current web page while opening the link in question, rather than switching from the current web page to the newly opened link.

Here’s how to change the link opening behavior in Safari on iPhone and iPod touch to open in the background to a new tab:

Open “Settings” and tap on “Safari”
Look for and tap on “Open Links” and change from “In New Page” to “In Background”

Now with the feature enabled here’s how to use it:

Launch Safari to any webpage with links
Tap and hold any link to summon the familiar Open menu, and select “Open in Background” to create a new background window with that link
Browse the main page as usual, access the opened link by tapping the Safari pages indicator in the corner

This is perfect to use when you’re in the middle of reading a web page and see an interesting link that you want to read next without losing your place, though it can easily lead to endless Wikipedia wandering, and it’s also great if you’re downloading images and wallpapers to iOS. You may notice the background option isn’t available on iPad, that’s because Safari has tabbed browsing there.