Safari on the iPhone and iPad: automatically close open tabs after a certain period of time

I'm always happy when my son closes all the "open apps" on my iPhone and then explains to me that my iPhone has more space as a result. Somehow that will probably be true, but of course not all apps that are displayed in the app switcher are also active in the background. As a rule, it should only be the last two or three.

From app switcher to safari tabs

It is the same with the open tabs in the Safari browser on iOS. I usually open a new tab whenever I'm looking for something, and this way you can easily have a high double-digit number of open tabs in Safari after a few weeks.

My son would probably get into the crisis if he knew what my safari looks like. I don't really care, because these tabs do not actively use memory or CPU power, but Safari only keeps the small screenshot of the tabs in memory. As soon as you tap such a tab, the page is completely reloaded.

Automatically close Safari tabs

If you are just as tidy as my child, you can make things easy for yourself in the future, then Safari has an option that you can use to tell the Apple browser after what time it should automatically close unused tabs with websites.

This setting can be found under Settings> Safari> Tabs> Close tabs. There you can choose from these options:

• Manual
• After a day
• After a week
• After a month.

Here you can see the screenshots that show how to maneuver through the settings to land on the corresponding option.

In my opinion, the setting “After a month” is completely sufficient. Every now and then I want to remember a website and then just leave it open on the iPhone. If I still haven't checked back after a month, it probably wasn't that important after all. And then she can actually leave. If I look in earlier, she still has a chance to get my attention.

Last tip: close all Safari tabs with one click

If you prefer to press the Nuke button manually every now and then and shoot all tabs into nirvana, you should be happy about this tip:

If you go to the view with all the open tabs in Safari (iPad or iPhone), you will find a button on the bottom right that says “Done”. If you press and hold this button for about a second, the option will appear that allows you to close all open tabs with one swipe.

Here is the action again as a screenshot:

Jen Kleinholz( Founder & Sir Apfelot )

Jens has been running the blog since 2012. He acts as Sir Apfelot for his readers and helps them with technical problems. In his spare time he rides electric unicycles, takes photos (preferably with the iPhone, of course), climbs around in the Hessian mountains or hikes with the family. His articles deal with Apple products, news from the world of drones or solutions to current bugs.