Remove Thumbnails from iOS Safari Home and New Tab Page

Apple come up with wonderful new features in iOS12. However, the default favorites appearing in the Safari browser is sometimes embarrassing to work with. These defaults sites vary from Apple, iCloud, ESPN, Disney, Google, Yahoo!, etc., based on your registered country. Here is a simple article explaining step by step process of how to remove the default favorites and add your own in iOS and macOS Safari browsers. Check out other articles on removing thumbnails from Chrome, Firefox and Mac Safari.

Remove Default Favorites Thumbnail Icons in iOS

By default Safari browser on your iPhone and iPad will show the favorites like below:

Default Safari Favorites

Press and Delete

Apple made deleting these Safari favorites simple from iOS8 onwards. Just press the icon till it expands and release it to see the “Delete” and “Edit” options. Touch “Delete” to remove that icon from your favorites list.

Delete Safari Favorites by Long Press

If you want to edit the favorite name and URL, tap on the ‘Edit’ option and modify the details. Tap on the ‘Favorites’ location to change the location to ‘Bookmarks’ or save the link inside a ‘New Folder’.

Edit Bookmark in iOS Safari

Deleting Favorites Through Bookmarks

If press and delete method not works for any reason then don’t worry. There is another long method to remove those favorites from the home screen. In order to delete these favorites, tap on the Bookmark icon like open book at the bottom of Safari. If you have landscape mode or on iPad the bookmarks icon will show on the top of the browser.

Tap and Hold to View Options

Go to the first ‘Bookmarks’ tab and then tap on ‘Favorites’ option. Here you will see the list of all bookmarked favorites on your browser. Tap on the ‘Edit’ button shown in the lower right corner.

Edit Favorites in Safari iOS

You can see a red minus symbol against each favorite item and click on the minus symbol to see the Delete option. You need to delete all favorites one by one and there is no option to delete all favorites at a time. You also have an option to move your favorites up or down to change the order of display.

Delete Favorites Under Bookmarks

Otherwise, simply swipe the favorite option to left to view the ‘Delete’ option.

Swipe Left to Delete

Related: Fix slow Safari issues in macOS.

Adding a New Favorite

Open the website which you want to add it to your favorites. Click on the ‘Share’ icon and select ‘Add Bookmark’ option from the list.

Save Favorite to Bookmark in Safari iOS

Enter the details and choose the location to save your favorite link. Once you have bookmarked the page, it will automatically be shown under Favorites and on the Home screen of your browser.

Add Favorite Name and URL

Remove Thumbnails from iOS Safari

The biggest problem in showing thumbnails when you open the browser is that someone can accidentally see the browser on your iPhone or iPad. you also may feel this affects your privacy especially when sharing the devices among family or with others. But deleting default favorites will remove the links completely which will stop you accessing the sites quickly. The correct way is to only remove those annoying thumbnails from the home and new tab pages without deleting them from favorites.

Creating Empty Favorites Folder

Safari on your iPhone and iPad will show the thumbnails on new tab pages from favorites. Unfortunately we could not find any settings to hide the favorites from the new tab pages. So you need to follow some trick by creating an empty folder under favorite and assign that as your favorite. Since there are no websites in the empty folder, home and new tab pages will show a empty blank page while you can still have all favorites under ‘Favorites’ folder.

• Open Safari and tap on the ‘Bookmarks’ icon.
• Go to ‘Bookmarks’ tab and then tap ‘Favorites’ folder.
• Tap ‘Edit’ link and then tap ‘New Folder’ in the bottom left.

Creating New Folder

• Enter the name of the folder as ‘Empty’ and press ‘Done’ from the keyboard.

This will create an ‘Empty’ folder insider ‘Favorites’ folder.

Assigning Empty Folder as Favorites

The next step is to assign the empty folder to show as favorite on home and new tab pages.

• Tap on ‘Settings’ app on the dock.
• Swipe down and search for ‘Safari’ app.
• Under ‘General’ sections, you will see favorites will show as ‘Favorites’ folder.
• Tap on favorites and choose the empty folder.

Set Favorites to Empty Folder

Close settings and open Safari. You will see a blank empty page, tap on open new tab icon and create a new tab page. It will also show a blank page without any annoying icons.

Set Favorites to Empty Folder