Out of the box, Safari slows down your iPhone,
burns through your data and the battery life
and allows trackers to collect tons of data about you.
In this video,
we'll show you how to put a stop to all of that.
We need to start by opening settings,
scrolling down and tapping Safari.
Let's talk about preload top hit.
When preload top hit is on,
your iPhone automatically loads
the first Google search result
because it assumes you'll tap on it.
In Apple's defense, that's not a bad assumption,
but studies have shown less than 28% of people
actually click on that number one result.
And that's a lot of unnecessary data
and more importantly, battery life being used.
Let's turn off the switch next to preload top hit.
One below preload top hit is auto fill.
Auto fill helps you save time
when filling out forms online.
Let's tap on auto fill and take a look at my info.
Auto fill uses information from a contact.
In this case,
you're gonna have to create a contact for yourself
to fill out these forms online.
If you look at David's phone,
it says my info David Lynch.
He already has one set up.
If you don't, you need to create a contact
and you could do it really quick.
To create a contact for yourself,
first we need to close out of settings.
I'll swipe up from the bottom of the screen,
tap on the phone app and then tap into the contacts tab.
Then tap the plus button
in the upper right hand corner of the screen
and create the contact.
We're gonna stop at phone number and email address,
but you might wanna keep going
by entering your home address and your birthday
because this is where your iPhone is gonna get information
to fill into those forms online when you fill them out.
The more complete this is, the easier it is to check out.
I'll tap done upper right hand corner of the screen.
Now let's head back to the settings app.
I'll swipe up from the bottom of the screen
to the center of the screen to get to the app switcher.
Then I'll tap on settings.
If I wanted to switch my info
to the contact I just created,
I would tap on my info and then scroll down to the contact.
I'll use the letters on the side there,
just press and hold and slide down
till I get to the you, John UpPhone, tap on that.
And now my info is John UpPhone.
Before you leave a comment saying
you didn't blur your phone number or your email address,
well, that's a phone number we have for making videos,
so feel free to text us.
No guarantees we'll get back to you though.
To show you how this works,
let's go to a webpage with a contact form.
I'm gonna go back into the app switcher on my iPhone
by swiping up from the bottom to the center of the screen.
Then I'm going to tap on Safari.
If I tap into the name field,
we can see, look at that, it says my name right there.
I can just tap on my name, email address.
You could tap on that as well.
And you just saved tons of time
typing out your name and email.
It's great when you're checking out online,
makes it really easy to fill out all of your information,
but can be dangerous if you're impulsive like me
and like to buy things.
Next, we need to talk about extensions.
I'm gonna go back into the settings app
by going back into the app switcher, tapping on settings.
I'll tap back to Safari,
in the upper left hand corner of the screen,
scroll down and tap on extensions.
Apple says that extensions give Safari super powers,
like the ability to block ads and do a lot of other things
right from within the browser.
It's interesting to me
that they mentioned blocking ads specifically.
You would think they wouldn't
because they make a lot of money from ads
until you think about the fact
that they're blocking ads within Safari
and those are all Google's ads
and they're not blocking ads within apps,
which is where Apple makes their money.
Let's tap on more extensions
and see what extensions Apple has to offer.
Essential Safari extensions,
PayPal Honey, a password manager, ad blocker.
This is where some YouTubers would come in
and they do their paid sponsorship for Honey.
We don't have that, they're not paying us,
so we're gonna tell you about our members program.
We're talking about a lot of settings today.
Our number one comment we get
is that we go through settings too quickly.
So we created PDFs that walk through every setting
that we go through in videos like this
and they're available to our channel members.
Click that big join button below this video.
We would install one to show you how to do it,
but we think they're kind of useless.
The first one, PayPal Honey,
they're just making money themselves
using affiliate marketing.
The second one password, use iCloud password manager.
I think they get the point.
Let's head back to the settings app.
I'm gonna tap on that very small settings button
in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
I'm gonna tap back to Safari.
I'm gonna scroll down.
Let's take a look at tabs.
Single tab, classic Safari look.
Address bar at the top of the screen.
I was a holdout for a while
because I didn't want the address bar
at the bottom of the screen,
but then I started to use tab bar and I've converted.
I'm a tab bar user as well,
but if you prefer that classic Safari look,
you could just tap on single tab to make the switch.
Let's show them the difference.
With the tab bar,
you can swipe back and forth on the bottom of the screen
to switch between different browser tabs.
When it's single tab,
you have to tap the little tabs button
in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen
to switch between tabs.
It just adds an extra step.
I'm gonna switch back to the tab bar on my iPhone.
Speaking of tabs, we have a PSA for you.
If you know a tab hoarder-
You mean like one of those vendors at a Phish concert?
No, I mean like somebody who leaves open
way too many tabs in a Safari.
It can really slow things down and drain battery life.
Let's tap on close tabs.
I like choosing after one month.
If I don't get back to a webpage after one month,
I'm just never going to get to it.
Me neither.
A lot of people use tabs to save articles
they'd like to get back to and read later,
but there's a much better way to do that.
We'll talk about that later.
Next up, one of the most important Safari privacy features.
And it's called prevent cross-site tracking.
Let's tap back to Safari,
upper left-hand corner of the screen,
and take a look at this prevent cross-site tracking switch.
When this is on and you visit websites,
an increasingly detailed digital fingerprint
of yourself gets created.
And that presents a privacy issue
because after a while,
these websites know enough about you to identify you,
or at least get very close to figuring out who you are.
Let's turn on the switch next to prevent cross-site tracking
and then let's tap on hide IP address.
What is an IP address?
An IP address is like a home address
for phones and other devices that connect to the internet.
It helps other devices know where to send information,
just like a mail carrier uses a home address
to know where to send a letter.
We recommend choosing from trackers.
Find print alert.
Safari can hide your IP address from known trackers,
not every tracker.
The bad ones aren't known, so it doesn't help a ton,
and the good ones already follow the law.
If this doesn't sound like it's going to keep you
completely safe, it's because it isn't.
But we'll talk about better ways
to protect your privacy later on.
How about right now
with a feature called privacy preserving ad measurement?
Let's tap back to Safari,
upper left-hand corner of the screen,
scroll down and take a look at the switch
next to privacy preserving ad measurement.
This setting should just be called ad measurement
because when you turn it off,
it doesn't mean that your privacy isn't preserved.
It means there won't be any ad measurement whatsoever.
Is the name of this setting deliberately misleading
to help ad networks make more money?
You be the judge.
Let us know in the comments section below.
Make sure to turn off the switch
next to privacy preserving ad measurement.
And for more help with these sneaky Apple settings,
make sure you subscribe to the channel
so you don't miss a video.
It's amazing how much one setting can do.
Let's scroll down and tap on camera.
When you visit a website in Safari,
do you want that website to have access
to your phone's camera?
Here's where you get to decide
the default level of access for all websites.
Funnily enough, if you go to iPhone settings
and tap on privacy and security,
and then tap on camera,
Safari isn't there,
even though that's where this setting lives
for every other app.
The wording of this setting makes it seem like
if you tap deny,
you'll never be able to use the camera on any website
and you might want to,
but it's really not the case.
If you tap deny and you go to a website
that uses your camera,
you might get a notification like this one
that says you can't use your camera because you hit deny,
but there's a way to override it.
Tap the little 2A button
in the lower left-hand corner of the screen,
then tap website settings,
and then tap camera.
You can manually change it to allow,
and then tap done
in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
Now this website does have access to my camera.
You might need to refresh the page.
I'll tap that little refresh button
in the lower right-hand corner of the screen,
and we'll go through the setup process one more time,
and let's tap allow
when it asks for access to the camera and microphone.
Tap allow.
In the settings app,
you will see the website we just changed
the default access for,
which is vdo.ninja.
It says allow now,
and everybody else is denied by default.
This makes my life simpler and less annoying,
especially when it comes to location settings.
Let's tap back to Safari
upper left-hand corner of the screen.
Tap on microphone works exactly the same way as camera.
So if you want to do the same thing we just did,
we can just tap deny here.
Let's tap back to Safari
upper left-hand corner of the screen
and talk about location.
Works exactly the same way,
and this is the one that really makes my life simpler
because there are certain websites
that I visit frequently
that are constantly asking
if I want to allow them to track my location.
Sometimes the answer is always yes.
Sometimes the answer is always no.
It rarely changes from day to day.
So then I just choose deny for everything,
and then I can go to the website
and override those settings if necessary.
For me, I just like setting it to ask for all of them.
I don't really mind the frequent popups.
I'm okay with it,
but if you are not and it annoys you,
deny is the way to go.
But there's another Safari location setting
we need to change that's different than this one.
I think it should be here, but it isn't.
Let's tap back to Safari
upper left-hand corner of the screen.
Back to the main page of settings.
Scroll up and tap privacy and security.
Then tap location services.
Scroll down to Safari websites.
Tap on that and turn off the switch
next to precise location.
GPS on your phone uses more battery
the more precise your phone homes in on where you are.
So you need precise location for certain apps
like maps apps, but not for websites.
Earlier in this video, we talked about an easier way
to save articles on your iPhone
without opening a bunch of tabs.
But before we talk about that,
let's go back to the Safari section of settings
and talk about a super important setting.
We'll tap back upper left-hand corner of the screen.
Back to the main page of settings.
Scroll down and tap Safari.
Then scroll all the way down
to automatically save offline
underneath the reading list heading.
A lot of people don't use the reading list in Safari
because they don't know how to use
the reading list in Safari.
Let's take a look at how it works real quick.
First, you need to go back into Safari.
So open the app switcher by swiping up from the bottom
to the center of the screen.
I'll tap on Safari.
Then tap the share button at the bottom of the screen.
It's the one, it's the little box
with the arrow pointing up out of it.
And scroll down and tap add to reading list.
Okay, it's added to a reading list,
but where is this reading list?
How do we get back to it?
Tap on the open book icon at the bottom of the screen.
And here we have a few different things.
Let's swipe up just to expand my list a little bit here.
On the left, we have a bookmarks icon.
That is a book.
We have our reading list icon.
Looks like a pair of glasses.
And on the right, we have our history icon,
but we wanna go to our reading list.
I'll tap on that icon.
And to access an article on your reading list,
simply tap on it.
After David reads the article,
it disappears from the reading list,
so he doesn't have to go in
and manually remember to close the tab.
And that's where this setting comes into play.
So we just did a little tutorial inside of a settings video.
We're talking about reading lists.
We're going deep.
This is a great reason to join the channel.
We tend to be a little bit all over the place.
We hope you learn stuff along the way.
Let's head back to the settings app.
Let's swipe up to my app switcher and tap on settings.
Automatically save offline.
This automatically saves the articles
you add to your reading list offline
so you can access them
even when you don't have an internet connection.
Great for commuters on the train on your way to work.
Also saves you some data
because usually it's downloading them when you're on wifi.
Yeah, I mean, there's really no downside to this setting.
Next, let's talk about website data.
If you watch videos on how to clear caches on your iPhone
or free up storage space or get rid of system data,
all of them are gonna say clear history and website data.
But what actually is that website data?
Here's how to check.
On my phone, I'll tap advanced
and then I'll tap website data.
David's phone has 1.1 gigabytes of website data
saved or cached.
A lot of this is ad networks.
Gstatic, doubleclick.net, googlesindication.com,
these are all ad networks.
1.1 gigabytes, I'm not really concerned about that right now
but if you haven't cleared your Safari website data
in a long time, this number could just be absolutely massive.
And 1.1 gigabytes is actually kind of a lot.
That's like 10 seconds of ProRes video, David.
Next, let's talk about a section of settings
that you've gotten a lot of requests for.
I'll tap back to advance
upper left-hand corner of the screen
and then we'll tap on experimental features.
At last count, there were 179 of these experimental features
and they fall into two categories.
The first category are the features that are on by default,
which is about half of them.
The real experimental features
are the ones that are off by default.
And those are the new features that you can turn on
to preview some interesting new technologies.
Rather than going through 179 today, let's call that one.
And lucky me, we picked the one
all the way at the bottom of the screen.
So bear with me as I swipe all the way down to the bottom.
Woof, there it is.
ITP live on one hour timeout for non-cookie data removal.
ITP stands for Intelligent Tracking Protection.
So after one hour of you not using a website,
this is going to, by default,
remove all the data from that website,
clear out the cache for that website, except for cookies,
which is your login data.
If you need to keep your cache smaller,
you can try turning this one on,
or you can just go nuts
and turn off a whole bunch of switches,
turn on a whole bunch of switches,
because Apple did build in this reset all to defaults button.
If you ever wind up in a situation
where Safari is just totally broken
because you turned off all the CSS on every single website,
just come back here and tap that button.
That reset button in the bottom, as David said,
is the most important button in this entire list.
Next, we're gonna talk about iCloud Private Relay.
Let's tap back, upper left-hand corner of the screen,
back to Safari settings
and back to the main page of settings.
We're gonna scroll all the way up to the top of the screen
to Apple ID, tap on your name at the top of the screen,
then tap iCloud, scroll down and tap on Private Relay.
iCloud Private Relay is an iCloud Plus only feature
that protects your browsing online.
And if you don't already have iCloud Plus,
you can get a plan for as little as 99 cents a month.
And this might be a reason to do that.
When iCloud Private Relay originally came out,
we noticed it broke a ton of websites
and would even sometimes flag our internet activity
as suspicious.
Eventually, Apple even added a disclaimer.
Without access to your IP address,
some websites may require extra steps
to sign in or access content.
The good news is that Apple has made
iCloud Private Relay a lot better.
So we turn on Private Relay.
We have this IP address location option.
Let's tap on that.
And you can choose between Maintain General Location
or Use Country and Time Zone.
We did a little test here.
We are in Clifton Park, New York.
When we chose Maintain General Location
and went to iplocation.com,
we found out that our phone thinks we're in Albany, New York
not too far, not gonna break websites.
When we chose Use Country and Time Zone,
the first time I checked,
it thought I was in the Netherlands.
So that's not the right country.
But then the second time, it thought we were in...
New York City.
But far enough away to protect our privacy.
Also though, might break certain websites.
So I think that for most people, what?
Maintain General Location?
That's the one I would go with.
I'll select Maintain General Location.
Remember that Hide IP Address from Tracker setting
that I said might not keep you really safe?
This is Hide IP Address from Trackers on steroids.
It's Hide IP Address from everybody.
However, if you are a website
that actually needs your IP address,
there is a way to give it to that website manually.
So if we go back to Safari,
I'll swipe up from the bottom of the screen
to go to the app switcher.
I'll tap on Safari.
You can tap the AA button
in the lower left-hand corner of the screen
and then tap Show IP Address.
Allow iplocation.com to temporarily see your IP address.
Tap Continue.
And there's a little reload there
and now the IP is on the screen.
Next up, one of the fun settings, Customize Start Page.
And David actually taught me about this one yesterday.
We're already in Safari.
We need to go to the Start Page.
I'll tap that Tab button
in the lower right-hand corner of the screen
and then tap the Plus button
in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.
This is the Start Page in Safari.
I thought this was called the page of random crap
that came from God knows where,
but apparently there is some method to this madness.
We can scroll all the way down to this Edit button.
Tap on that.
And here's where you get to customize
the Start Page in Safari.
Not just that,
but sync it across all of your Apple devices.
So you change it here, it's on your Mac, it's on your iPad.
Let's see how fast we can explain what each of these do.
Favorites, websites you visit very often,
they're in your favorites.
Frequently visited, our web pages you visit frequently.
Shared with you, someone sends you a link
in an email or a text message,
shows up there at the top.
Privacy Report, this is where Apple tells you
how many trackers they've stopped from profiling you.
It's a neat little feature, but it's really useless.
Boring.
Siri Suggestions.
Siri's going to look through everything in your phone,
your emails, your browsing history, your messages,
and then intelligently suggest web pages you want to visit.
Could be dangerous if you're handing your phone
to somebody else, I don't like it.
Reading List, hey, we just talked about that.
You already know what it is.
iCloud Tabs.
For this to work, Safari needs to be enabled.
In the iCloud section of settings of your phone
and then other devices too,
if you want to synchronize those tabs, I like it.
Let's customize the Start Page on my iPhone.
Let's say, for example, I want to be more intentional
about using my Reading List.
Let's move back to the top of my Start Page.
I'm going to press and hold on the handle
on the right-hand side of Reading List
and just drag it to the very top of the screen.
Privacy Report is pretty useless in practice.
It just gives you a cool looking shield.
Just turn it off.
I like that Apple built it in, but yeah,
it's just, it's not very useful.
I'm going to turn off Privacy Report.
I'm also going to turn off Shared With You.
My wife likes to send me like Instagram links
and they show up in my Safari browser
and you click on that.
It sends you to like the Instagram website
as opposed to opening the app on your phone.
Don't need those in my Safari
every single time I open it up.
I'm going to turn that off.
And we saved the best for last, Background Image.
Let's turn on that switch.
So right now I have the hot dogs and hamburgers.
Like if I just tap the X upper right-hand corner
of the screen, we've got that background there.
It's, you know, it's interesting.
I'm not a big fan of that.
You can also choose your own custom image
from your photo library.
If you tap the plus button on Background Image
and maybe I want to be this picture of a mountain,
I'll tap the X upper right-hand corner of the screen.
That looks a little bit nicer.
David actually took that picture himself.
What mountain is that, David?
It's one of the mountains in the Adirondacks.
Personally, I don't like the background image in Safari.
It makes the webpage just kind of hard to read.
I'm going to tap that Edit button
and I'm going to turn off Background Image
and tap the X upper right-hand corner of the screen.
And now we can see right at the top, boom,
there's my reading list.
How about that?
Easier.
How about it?
But don't go anywhere.
Hang out with us for a little longer.
Check out our next video about the iPhone settings
you need to change to get the most out of your phone.
We'll see you there.