How to Remove Favorites from Safari on iOS 8

Have you recently opened Safari on your iOS device only to find a bloated and unkempt favorites list muddying up your screen? At the risk of sounding like an overzealous parent admonishing you to get on the Spring Cleaning train, I’m here to suggest the following to remove said favorites from Safari:

Clear out That Digital Clutter from Your Phone

Life’s too short to suffer the self-inflicted pangs of digital hoarding. Remember how obsessed you once were with Gangnam Style? Or that trip to WebMD you bookmarked when you had that weird rash on your back? Or how about that time you saved all those tutorials on removing chocolate stains from a shag carpet? (WILD party, bro.)

Do you really want to be reminded of all these things in perpetuity? I think not! Lighten your load and keep reading for some insight on how to streamline your iOS web browsing experience by removing pesky icons and regrettably favorited web pages from Safari’s startup screen.

1. Open Safari

Likely, the first thing you’ll see when opening Safari is the last web page you were browsing, or alternatively, you’ll come to that overstuffed launcher page that we’re trying to clean up:

2. Locate and click on the bookmark icon on the bottom of the screen. (The open book icon located 2nd to the right.)

3. Click on “Favorites.” Also note that you can swipe left on any of the bookmarked sites here to remove them. These are your bookmarked sites imported from the desktop version of Safari. Keep in mind, that these bookmarked sites are not represented by an icon on Safari’s launcher screen, so removing them will do nothing for your aspirations toward visual tidiness. It does, however feel really good to trim the fat though, doesn’t it?

4. Locate “Edit” at the bottom right hand of the screen and click.

From here, you can delete and/or rearrange any of your bookmarked pages, which will impact the launcher screen on Safari’s start up window. To delete items from this list, simply click the red circle to the left of the associated site you’d like to remove. Manually rearranging your list 0f favorites is also easily done from this screen. Simply touch and hold the 3 horizontal-lined tabs to the right of the associated site and rearrange the list to your heart’s content.

Hopefully by now you now feel inspired to practice the life changing art of decluttering, or at the very least, apply a more zenned out visual aesthetic to your iOS device. Then again, some people thrive amidst chaos and clutter…

Bonus Tip: Have you accidentally favorited the mobile version of your favorite website by mistake? To request the desktop version of any website, click on the URL in the search bar at the top of Safari’s browser. Swipe down on this screen to reveal a shortcut for requesting the desktop version of the site you’re currently browsing, or to add said web page to your favorites list.

What other streamlining techniques do you use to more efficiently browse the interwebs?