New iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 betas fix some of Safari’s biggest problems

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New iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 betas fix some of Safari’s biggest problems
With the release of iOS 15 beta 3, the Safari Address Bar stays at the bottom of the screen where it belongs.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

The just-released iOS 15 beta 3 fixes the bouncing address bar in Safari. Plus, iPadOS 15 beta 3 makes Safari’s Share button much more prominent. Both changes apparently come in response to complaints from beta testers about Apple’s updated mobile web browser.

The latest betas, released Wednesday, also bring other changes to the iPhone and iPad versions of Safari.

iOS 15 ends Safari’s bouncing address bar

iOS 15 revamps the design of Safari in many ways. One of the more noticeable ones is that the Address Bar moves to the bottom of the screen, where it’s more reachable. But in previous betas, the Address Bar would jump to the top of the screen when being edited. That changed in Wednesday’s iOS 15 beta 3. Now the Safari Address Bar stays at the bottom of the iPhone’s screen.

Plus, Apple expanded the size of the floating Address Bar to make room for a Forward button.

iPadOS 15 makes sharing easier from Safari

The Share button, formerly a prominent part of the Address Bar in the iPad version of Safari, was moved to a subwindow in earlier iPadOS 15 betas. That changed in Wednesday’s Beta 3 — it’s once again easily accessible from the Address Bar.

iPadOS 15 makes sharing easier from Safari: The Safari Share button is back
The Safari Share button is back!
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

A bug in Tab Groups

Unfortunately, Apple seems to have introduced a bug in iOS 15 beta 3 and the iPadOS equivalent. It’s now harder to move a tab between Safari Tab Groups.

On the list of open tabs at the top of the screen, pressing and holding on a tab opens a list of options. In previous betas, this window included an option to move an open tab to a different tab group. This is now gone.

But this is likely a mistake. Tab Groups are an important new feature of Safari on iPad, and it’s unlikely Apple would deliberately make them harder to work with. Plus, the option to move tabs between Tab Groups is still an option when viewing open websites as thumbnails.

With iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 (and macOS Monterey, too), Apple makes significant changes to the various iterations of the Safari web browser. Clearly, these are still in flux. But that’s the purpose of public beta testing — to let users try new changes and find any problems.

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