Safari on iPadOS 15 - annoying “feature”
Discussion
I’ve recently updated my iPad to iPadOS 15, and I’m finding a new feature of Safari very annoying. Is there a way to turn it off, or at least make it less annoying?
It’s the five icons that insist on appearing along the bottom of the screen, every single time you switch to Safari. Even if I just switch momentarily to another app and come back 5 seconds later, there they are again. They’re infuriating!
I’m not sure, but they appear to be recent tab groups. But I don’t use tab groups; I don’t find that a useful feature. So these icons just block my view and get in the way. And if I tap away from them there’s the possibility of accidentally tapping on a link on the underlying web page, thus taking me somewhere I didn’t intend to go.
I’ve tried creating my own tab groups, but it doesn’t list those. They don’t even represent my favourites. There seems to be no rational sense to what they refer to.
Can you turn them off?
These are the icons I mean…
It’s the five icons that insist on appearing along the bottom of the screen, every single time you switch to Safari. Even if I just switch momentarily to another app and come back 5 seconds later, there they are again. They’re infuriating!
I’m not sure, but they appear to be recent tab groups. But I don’t use tab groups; I don’t find that a useful feature. So these icons just block my view and get in the way. And if I tap away from them there’s the possibility of accidentally tapping on a link on the underlying web page, thus taking me somewhere I didn’t intend to go.
I’ve tried creating my own tab groups, but it doesn’t list those. They don’t even represent my favourites. There seems to be no rational sense to what they refer to.
Can you turn them off?
These are the icons I mean…
Hallelujah!!!
I've got rid of the flippin' things.
I dragged one all the way up to the top of the screen, and it disappeared. So I did it with the next, and the next, until I was left with just one.
Now, when I switch away from Safari and come back, hooray! There's no more annoying little icons.
So the question is, what on earth were they? How did I end up with them in the first place?
I've got rid of the flippin' things.
I dragged one all the way up to the top of the screen, and it disappeared. So I did it with the next, and the next, until I was left with just one.
Now, when I switch away from Safari and come back, hooray! There's no more annoying little icons.
So the question is, what on earth were they? How did I end up with them in the first place?
Okay, had a play....do you use 'Split View'?
I think what you've done is instead of opening multiple tabs, you've created multiple windows...and it's these that are being offered when you open Safari...as it doesn't know which session you want to go to.
When you click on a link do you 'Open in Background' or 'Open in Split View'. In my case, if I use 'Split View' and close Safari, when I come back to it, it shows me all the thumbnails at the bottom of all the different windows I've opened in Split View.
I think what you've done is instead of opening multiple tabs, you've created multiple windows...and it's these that are being offered when you open Safari...as it doesn't know which session you want to go to.
When you click on a link do you 'Open in Background' or 'Open in Split View'. In my case, if I use 'Split View' and close Safari, when I come back to it, it shows me all the thumbnails at the bottom of all the different windows I've opened in Split View.
Those are appearing because you have at some point (very possibly by mistake) had a split screen view open.
Those three dots at top centre of the screen give you the option of doing this, so you can show two apps or two Safari sessions alongside each other. When you open up an app that has multiple sessions, it shows those icons so you can choose whether to switch to them.
Utter PITA in my view, but at least you found out how to close them
Those three dots at top centre of the screen give you the option of doing this, so you can show two apps or two Safari sessions alongside each other. When you open up an app that has multiple sessions, it shows those icons so you can choose whether to switch to them.
Utter PITA in my view, but at least you found out how to close them
Okay, I'm answering my own question here, but I'm making some progress towards understanding what the heck is going on.
This appears to be part of the iPadOS multitasking functionality.
So, as I discovered above, you can get rid of these when they appear by sliding them off the top of the screen into oblivion. But you can't get rid of the last one - however, it won't appear next time you open Safari.
Now, how did they get there? Well, it appears that each of these icons represents a window rather than a tab (or a tab group). I do seem to remember that Safari on the iPad used to have an "open in new window" option if you did a long touch on a link. But that seems to have gone now.
However, if you go to the Safari icon on your home screen (or on the taskbar if that's where you keep it), and do a long-ish touch - you'll get a pop-up menu which includes the "show all windows" option. Select that, and it'll show you all the Safari windows you've got open. And there's a little "+" button to allow you to create a new window. If you do that, now when you go into Safari you'll get the intensely annoying little icons inviting you to select which of your multiple Safari windows you want to view.
Note that to get the pop-up menu you need a long-ish touch of a second or two, but not too long otherwise the icons go into "wiggly" mode and then you're editing your home screen.
And it turns out that Safari isn't the only app to have this feature. So does Mail. So does Calendar. So does Reminders. There are probably others, but that's what I've discovered so far. But for all of them you can have multiple windows, which cause a list of icons to appear when you open that app.
I can sort-of see why they've removed the "open in new window" option in Safari, because multiple windows simply duplicate the idea of tab groups, and the two concepts are confusingly similar. I must have opened some links in separate windows (probably months ago) and I had simply lost track of them - largely because I didn't understand how to access the other windows.
Edited to add: Thanks to those who responded! I was reaching a similar conclusion as you were posting. Ta!
This appears to be part of the iPadOS multitasking functionality.
So, as I discovered above, you can get rid of these when they appear by sliding them off the top of the screen into oblivion. But you can't get rid of the last one - however, it won't appear next time you open Safari.
Now, how did they get there? Well, it appears that each of these icons represents a window rather than a tab (or a tab group). I do seem to remember that Safari on the iPad used to have an "open in new window" option if you did a long touch on a link. But that seems to have gone now.
However, if you go to the Safari icon on your home screen (or on the taskbar if that's where you keep it), and do a long-ish touch - you'll get a pop-up menu which includes the "show all windows" option. Select that, and it'll show you all the Safari windows you've got open. And there's a little "+" button to allow you to create a new window. If you do that, now when you go into Safari you'll get the intensely annoying little icons inviting you to select which of your multiple Safari windows you want to view.
Note that to get the pop-up menu you need a long-ish touch of a second or two, but not too long otherwise the icons go into "wiggly" mode and then you're editing your home screen.
And it turns out that Safari isn't the only app to have this feature. So does Mail. So does Calendar. So does Reminders. There are probably others, but that's what I've discovered so far. But for all of them you can have multiple windows, which cause a list of icons to appear when you open that app.
I can sort-of see why they've removed the "open in new window" option in Safari, because multiple windows simply duplicate the idea of tab groups, and the two concepts are confusingly similar. I must have opened some links in separate windows (probably months ago) and I had simply lost track of them - largely because I didn't understand how to access the other windows.
595Heaven said:
Those are appearing because you have at some point (very possibly by mistake) had a split screen view open.
Yep - pretty sure that's exactly right!Edited to add: Thanks to those who responded! I was reaching a similar conclusion as you were posting. Ta!
Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Tuesday 23 November 14:21
You know what? This is miles more confusing than I'd realised! 
If I select "open in split view", I don't get a new window. What I end up with is one window, with two pages displayed side-by-side. I don't get the little thumbnail icons when I go into Safari, and the "show all windows" screen just displays one window (with both pages side-by-side within it).
So it appears that Safari has no fewer than three confusingly similar concepts that partially overlap each other in functionality:
Edited to add: Further complexity! What I've written above is correct, but not quite complete. If you open a link in a split view, it is indeed not a new window... yet! If you then slide the splitter across the screen to apparently get rid of one of the views, that view doesn't actually go away - it becomes a new window!!! This is almost certainly how I ended up with multiple Safari windows.
If I select "open in split view", I don't get a new window. What I end up with is one window, with two pages displayed side-by-side. I don't get the little thumbnail icons when I go into Safari, and the "show all windows" screen just displays one window (with both pages side-by-side within it).
So it appears that Safari has no fewer than three confusingly similar concepts that partially overlap each other in functionality:
- Multiple windows
- Split view
- Tab groups
Edited to add: Further complexity! What I've written above is correct, but not quite complete. If you open a link in a split view, it is indeed not a new window... yet! If you then slide the splitter across the screen to apparently get rid of one of the views, that view doesn't actually go away - it becomes a new window!!! This is almost certainly how I ended up with multiple Safari windows.
Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Tuesday 23 November 14:42
Dr Mike Oxgreen said:
You know what? This is miles more confusing than I'd realised!
If I select "open in split view", I don't get a new window. What I end up with is one window, with two pages displayed side-by-side. I don't get the little thumbnail icons when I go into Safari, and the "show all windows" screen just displays one window (with both pages side-by-side within it).
So it appears that Safari has no fewer than three confusingly similar concepts that partially overlap each other in functionality:
How are you defining 'window' and 'page' though?If I select "open in split view", I don't get a new window. What I end up with is one window, with two pages displayed side-by-side. I don't get the little thumbnail icons when I go into Safari, and the "show all windows" screen just displays one window (with both pages side-by-side within it).
So it appears that Safari has no fewer than three confusingly similar concepts that partially overlap each other in functionality:
- Multiple windows
- Split view
- Tab groups
How would a 2nd 'window' look different to a 2nd 'page' in it's own area of the screen?
BTW, if you now come out of Safari, and go back in, you'll see those thumbnails have come back.
mmm-five said:
How are you defining 'window' and 'page' though?
How would a 2nd 'window' look different to a 2nd 'page' in it's own area of the screen?
BTW, if you now come out of Safari, and go back in, you'll see those thumbnails have come back.
If you go into the "show all windows" screen by giving a long-ish touch on the Safari icon on your home screen (or on the taskbar), you'll see how many multiple windows you've got open. If all you've done is opened a web page in a split view, you won't see multiple windows on this screen - you will only see one window with both web pages side-by-side.How would a 2nd 'window' look different to a 2nd 'page' in it's own area of the screen?
BTW, if you now come out of Safari, and go back in, you'll see those thumbnails have come back.
Try it! (You may need to get rid of all your multiple windows first to avoid confusion.)
Some pictures will help.
If I start from scratch, and open BBC News in safari, and then go to the “show all windows” screen from my Home Screen, this is what I see:
If I start again from scratch, and open BBC News in Safari, then open the Sport page in a split view, this is what I see when I go to the “show all windows” screen. Just one window, but with both pages side-by-side (although you can slide either tab off the top of the screen to get rid of it independently, as if they were separate windows). And I don’t get the thumbnails when I go into Safari…
Now if I start again from scratch, open the BBC News site in Safari, then go to the “show all windows” screen and use the little “+” button to create a new Safari window, and open the Sport page in that, I now do get thumbnails when I go into Safari, and I see two separate windows in the “show all windows” screen, like this…
Confused yet?
Edited to add: If I start from the position in the second picture (split view), and I drag the splitter to the right of the screen, it looks like I've got rid of the Sport page... but I haven't! It's reincarnated as a separate window, which looks like the third picture!
If I start from scratch, and open BBC News in safari, and then go to the “show all windows” screen from my Home Screen, this is what I see:
If I start again from scratch, and open BBC News in Safari, then open the Sport page in a split view, this is what I see when I go to the “show all windows” screen. Just one window, but with both pages side-by-side (although you can slide either tab off the top of the screen to get rid of it independently, as if they were separate windows). And I don’t get the thumbnails when I go into Safari…
Now if I start again from scratch, open the BBC News site in Safari, then go to the “show all windows” screen and use the little “+” button to create a new Safari window, and open the Sport page in that, I now do get thumbnails when I go into Safari, and I see two separate windows in the “show all windows” screen, like this…
Confused yet?
Edited to add: If I start from the position in the second picture (split view), and I drag the splitter to the right of the screen, it looks like I've got rid of the Sport page... but I haven't! It's reincarnated as a separate window, which looks like the third picture!
Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Tuesday 23 November 15:00
I boggle at how Apple have made such a dog's breakfast of this.
And I'm absolutely certain Steve Jobs would not have allowed this to happen. He seemed to rule his software department with an iron fist and no way would such a multiplicity of confusingly similar functionality have come into existence under his leadership.
And I'm absolutely certain Steve Jobs would not have allowed this to happen. He seemed to rule his software department with an iron fist and no way would such a multiplicity of confusingly similar functionality have come into existence under his leadership.
So I have a question!
Sometimes I find Safari's split view useful, and occasionally I do use it.
But the only way I know to get rid of one half of the split is to drag the splitter across to one edge of the screen.
As I now know, this does not get rid of that half - it just turns it into a separate window. And this must be how I ended up with multiple windows under iPadOS 14.x.
Previously in iPadOS 14.x these separate windows never reared their ugly head - you could just forget about them. Indeed, I was unaware of their existence. But in iPadOS 15.x these extra windows pop up as annoying little thumbnails when you go into Safari.
So... How do you close down half of a Safari split view without dragging the splitter? I've just tried touching the three little dots at the top of one half of the split view and selecting the full-screen option... and this has exactly the same effect as dragging the splitter, i.e. I end up with multiple windows.
Sometimes I find Safari's split view useful, and occasionally I do use it.
But the only way I know to get rid of one half of the split is to drag the splitter across to one edge of the screen.
As I now know, this does not get rid of that half - it just turns it into a separate window. And this must be how I ended up with multiple windows under iPadOS 14.x.
Previously in iPadOS 14.x these separate windows never reared their ugly head - you could just forget about them. Indeed, I was unaware of their existence. But in iPadOS 15.x these extra windows pop up as annoying little thumbnails when you go into Safari.
So... How do you close down half of a Safari split view without dragging the splitter? I've just tried touching the three little dots at the top of one half of the split view and selecting the full-screen option... and this has exactly the same effect as dragging the splitter, i.e. I end up with multiple windows.
outnumbered said:
Surely Steve Jobs would have had the bloke (and it was definitely a bloke) that invented the split screen UI stuff, shot at dawn ? It's just a total mess.
The good news is that you can (mostly?) turn it off in the Multitasking Settings page.
And at least you now get the icons at the top so they must have listened a bit. In iOS 13/14 I kept managing to accident swipe somehow and end up in split screen with no way to join the tabs back into one browser instance. The good news is that you can (mostly?) turn it off in the Multitasking Settings page.
Apple seem to have made a mess of safari in both Monterey and iOS 15, particularly bookmarks. They seem to have improved it in iOS 15 with the latest updates, but on Monterey ever time I go back to my bookmarks they reset to the “just opened” state and I have to click through the folders to open them again. Quite a lot of negative comment on the Apple support forums about this issue.
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