HOW TO Utilize Safari Profiles

Start from scratch

The first thing we need to do is go into Settings > Safari and then scroll down to the new Profiles section. When you’re here for the first time, there’s just one thing to select: the New Profile link. So let’s tap that one now.

Customize the look

As you can see, you need to give your new profile a name and an icon. If you don’t like the icon or colors in the main block, tap the “…” icon for more options (shown here). Once done, there are a few more steps to consider.

Find your Favorites

You can set your Favorites to an existing folder or a new one. This enables you to organize bookmarks per profile. For example, you might want to keep work bookmarks in your work profile and hide them in non–work profiles.

Add one more

When you tap on Done, Safari automatically adds another profile, which it calls “Personal”. This is where all your currently open tabs go. Let’s add one more, this time for work stuff. With incredible originality we’ll call that “Work”.

Spot the icon

Open Safari. If you look towards the top left of the screen, or at the bottom when you open a new tab on iPhone, you should see a little icon that looks like a head and shoulders. That’s where your profiles live, so tap it to see a menu.

Pick your profile

Where it says Profile, it should also tell you which profile you’re currently on, in this case Personal. Tap on it and another menu pops up, this time with your available profiles. Tap the one you want and it’ll change to that profile.

Do your thing

In this example, we’ve tapped on our brand–new Online Shopping profile. As you can see, it’s a very garish start page; the purple is the color we foolishly picked in Settings. Now you can just use Safari as normal. Try opening a few tabs.

Switch profiles

So we have opened a bunch of tabs and Safari’s working normally. But then… oh no! It’s the boss! To switch to the Work profile, go back to the profiles icon — for us it says Online Shopping — and tap Profile > Work.

Get to work

As with our Online Shopping profile, we’re taken to a standard Start Page — this time in orange. You can now use Safari normally, and switching between different profiles will switch between their open tabs, groups and bookmarks.