You may open websites in different tabs related to your work, personal and for variety of other reasons. Keeping everything under a single section in Safari browser can easily confuse you and anyone can also easily find your secret private tabs. It will also reduce your ability to find the required tabs quickly. The best option is to keep your private and work-related tabs in hidden mode and access them only when needed. This will also increase the privacy by preventing or avoiding someone using your phone accidentally accessing the open tabs. Though iPhone does not offer such option to show or hide tabs, you still have multiple ways to hide your tabs in Safari browser.
Hide Tabs in Safari
Depending on your situation, you can use one of the following methods to hide a tab:
- Create separate profiles for keeping your private, personal and work related tabs.
- Use Private mode to lock tabs with Face ID.
- Create tab groups and keep related tabs without mixing with other tabs.
1. Hiding Tabs with Profile
The latest iOS version (17 or later) allows you to create multiple profiles and share across devices logged in with same Apple account. Each profile will keep the tabs, history and favorites separately without mixing, which makes ideal for hiding your private tabs.
- Open Settings app and go to “Safari” section.
- Scroll down to “Profiles” section and tap on “New Profile” option.
- Provide a name for your profile, select color, icon, favorites and new tab page settings. Tap “Done” to create a profile.
- Now, you will see two profiles – one is the name you have created and another is with “Personal” name. This “Personal” profile is the default one used by Safari which will not show unless you create an additional one.
- Close Settings app and open Safari. Tap on the tabs icon showing at bottom right corner.
- You will see a profile icon in the center and tap on it.
- Select the name you have created from the drop down to switch your profile.
- You will see the Start Page shows with color and icons as you have set in the profile. Tap on the + icon showing on bottom left corner to open a new tab in current profile.
You can leave Safari with the default “Personal” profile when sharing iPhone with your kids or someone. Unless they switch the profile manually, they will not know there are open tabs in your secret hidden profile. Anytime, you can navigate to Settings app and delete the profile if not needed.
Remember, though tabs and history will be kept within a profile, the profile itself will be shared across your devices. This means, anyone can switch the profile in Mac Safari and view your iPhone profile’s history and tabs. So, this option will be useful when you are only using iPhone without any other Apple devices logged in with your account.
2. Hide Tabs with Private Mode
Safari Private mode allows you to lock tabs with Face ID and browse without storing any history. So, even if someone switch normal Start Page to Private mode, they will not be able to see the open tabs without you unlocking the screen with Face ID.
- Open Settings app and go to “Safari” section.
- Scroll down on the settings page and enable “Require Face ID to Unlock Private Browsing” option under “Privacy & Security” section.
- Close Settings app, open Safari app and tap on the tabs icon.
- You should see a “Private” button on left side of the “Start Page” button and tap on it.
- This will open Private mode and tap on the + icon to create new private tabs.
- Now, close and reopen Safari app and then go to Private mode. Or switch modes within Safari like going to Start Page and then navigate back to Private mode again. Safari will prompt you to unlock the screen with Face ID without which it is not possible to view tabs content. Private tabs will also not show previews when you view Safari in App Switcher.
Note: If you are not seeing “Private” button in Safari app, then content restriction is setup in your iPhone. Learn more on how to enable or disable Private mode in Safari.
3. Hide Tabs with Tabs Group
The last option is to regroup same category of sites under different groups. Though this is not hiding, you can primarily use this option for your own purpose to organize tabs and keep relevant sites in different sections.
- Open Safari and tap on the tabs icon.
- Tap the three horizontal lines icon showing at the center of bottom section and select “New Empty Tab Group” option.
- Type the name for your group and tap on “Save” to create a new tab group.
- Henceforth, you will see the tab group name whenever tapping on the tabs icon (along with the Start Page and Private mode buttons).
Select the tab group button and create a new tab by tapping on the + icon. You can create as many as tab groups and keep multiple tabs in each group. Note that tab groups also will be shared across your devices similar to Profiles (click the Sidebar icon in Mac Safari to view all tab groups under your Apple account).
Final Words
As you can see, though there are multiple options available in iPhone, they are not straight forward to hide or show tabs in Safari app. The best option is to create profile and keep your tabs / history separately or use Private mode with Face ID lock. You can rely on Tab Groups only for your own use.
