What Are the Two Safari Tips 9to5Mac Just Flagged for iPhone?

Two Safari settings on iPhone got fresh attention from 9to5Mac this week: Tab Groups for taming an overgrown browser, and the Privacy Report for seeing what Safari actually blocks while you scroll. Neither is new to iOS, but both sit a tap or two deeper than most people bother to go, which is likely why the outlet called them out as quick wins.

How do you turn on Tab Groups in Safari?

Open Safari and tap the tabs icon at the bottom right of the screen. From the open-tabs view, tap the tab-group switcher button near the address bar — it looks like two overlapping squares. Choose "New Tab Group" and give it a name tied to what you're doing, like "Trip Planning" or "Research." Any tab you open while that group is active stays inside it, and you can jump between groups from the same switcher without losing your place in another project. For anyone who keeps a dozen-plus pages open at once, this one setting does more to cut clutter than closing tabs ever does, because it sorts instead of deletes.

What does Safari's Privacy Report show you?

Tap the small shield icon on the left side of the address bar while a page is loaded. That opens a short summary of trackers Safari stopped from profiling you on that specific site. For the bigger picture, go to Settings, then Safari, then Privacy Report, where iOS lists every tracker blocked across your browsing in recent history. It's not a setting you toggle so much as a window you check, but seeing the list change a reader's sense of how much tracking happens by default on an ordinary news site or shopping page.

Why do these two settings matter for daily browsing?

Together they address the two most common complaints about mobile browsing: too many open tabs and too little visibility into what's happening in the background. Tab Groups keeps a phone's browser from turning into a junk drawer, which matters more on a smaller screen where swiping through forty tabs is its own chore. The Privacy Report doesn't block anything new, but it turns an invisible process into something a person can actually look at and decide whether to care about.

Where did 9to5Mac's tips come from?

The pairing ran as part of 9to5Mac's ongoing coverage of iPhone settings worth knowing about, a beat the outlet returns to often as Apple keeps adjusting Safari in minor iOS updates. The site framed both tips as settings many iPhone owners have but rarely use, rather than anything newly added.

Which other Safari setting is worth a look?

If tab clutter is a recurring problem, it's worth pairing Tab Groups with Safari's "Close Tabs" auto-close option under Settings, Safari, Close Tabs, which can retire tabs after a day, a week, or a month automatically. That, combined with a quick glance at the Privacy Report now and then, covers the two most practical levers Safari offers without touching a single third-party app.

For more small-scale iPhone fixes, our earlier piece on Flipcorder covers another corner of the phone worth tinkering with, this time on the camera side rather than the browser.