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How to close all Safari tabs at once on iPhone and iPad

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Does your Safari tab view looked like an overstuffed Rolodex? We can totally help.
Does your Safari tab view looked like an overstuffed Rolodex? We can totally help.
Photo: Sarah Gerke/Flickr CC

You probably know the trick for closing lots of tabs in Safari on your iPhone. You enter the tab overview aka Rolodex view, and then swipe those tabs off the screen one by one. It’s even kind of fun, but if you have lots and lots of tabs open, then the fun wears off pretty fast. So you’ll be happy to hear that there is a better way. A much better way, in fact, that lets you close all your open tabs with one tap.

How to watch the WWDC 2018 keynote live stream

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WWDC 2018 Keynote banner
As ever, WWDC was a
Photo: Apple/Cult of Mac

WWDC 2018 bug Cult of MacGetting ready for today’s WWDC 2018 Keynote? Of course you are. You probably already stocked up on popcorn, or those filthy Haribo candies, and have a fresh bag of coffee beans ready to grind (or a crate of the manchild’s alternative, Club Mate).

All you need now is a live stream of the show. Let’s see how to watch the WWDC 2018 Keynote on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and even PC.

Instantly open Mobile Safari links in new tabs with this special tap gesture

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open in new tab shortcut
Dust off Safari's tabs with this great time-saving gesture.
Photo: Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr

To open a link in a new tab in Safari for iPhone or iPad, you have to tap and hold the link, then wait for a pop-up menu to arrive. That’s a long wait, and it got even longer in iOS 11, thanks to the addition of drag-and-drop. Your iPhone or iPad waits a little longer just to check you’re not planning to drag that link somewhere.

But what if there were a one-tap way to open links in a new tab? You could power through a list of links, tap tap tap, and they’d all open up in new background tabs, loaded and ready to read. It would be like command-clicking on the Mac. Well, there is such a trick, and it’s super-super easy to use.

Killzapper zaps annoying webpage elements

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killzapper removes web pages annoyances
Killzapper can remove pretty much anything from a web page.
Photo: Robert McGoldrick/Flickr CC

Did you ever visit a website and find something annoying? The answer is, of course, yes. Ad-blockers and content blockers strip a lot of the junk from a page, but there may be other elements — videos, popups, hideous profile photos on forums, which just annoy you. Today, we’ll see how to get rid of those irritating elements with a single click, using Brett Terpstra’s Killzapper.

How to stop websites hijacking Safari

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hijacked StopTheMadness
Take back control of Safari with StopTheMadness.
Photo: Daniel Rehn/Flickr CC

Did you ever visit a website and find that it had blocked the usual behavior of the Safari browser? Maybe it’s a banking site that won’t let you paste in your long password into its password field? Or maybe you discovered that YouTube disables Safari’s contextual (right-click) menus and replaces them with it’s own versions? Or maybe you can’t drag that image to the desktop, or copy text from the page?

The good news is that you can wrest control of your browser back from these malicious, control-freak sites. Let’s see how, using the StopTheMadness browser extension.

Pro Tip: Use emoji labels in Safari’s Favorites bar

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emoji-bookmarks
Emoji bookmarks labels look great.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bug Safari’s Favorites bar is the handiest part of the whole app. On Mac and iPad, it sits permanently at the top of the screen, ready for you to tap bookmarks and bookmarklets, either for fast access to a site, or to execute some neat JavaScript trick. But it can get cluttered up there.

By using Emojis instead of text to label your bookmarks, you can fit more of them in, and you can easily identify them by sight.

How to sort Safari bookmarks alphabetically

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bookmarks alphabetically
Try sorting this kind of bookmark alphabetically.
Photo: Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr CC

OCD users of macOS 10.13.4 rejoice! You can now reorder your Safari bookmarks alphabetically. Instead of having to settle for having Safari’s bookmarks always being in the order you created them, or having to manually drag them into the order you want, you can now have Safari sort them for you.

Why would you want to do this? Well, if you’re browsing through a huge folder of bookmarks, then having any kind of sort order is better than none. And if you’re using accessibility options — for instance if you are using screen readers because your sight is impaired — then alphabetical listings are essential.

Force YouTube videos to play full-screen in Safari on iPad

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full screen youtube iPad safari
Is it time you took a break from YouTube?
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

If you’re watching YouTube on your iPhone or Mac, then you can just tap a button to watch the video in proper full-screen, just you and a skateboarding dog, with nothing to distract you. But on the iPad, the same “full-screen” button just maximizes the video into the browser tab, with all the Safari chrome still surrounding it. And because it doesn’t use the native iOS video view, you can’t watch the video in Picture in Picture mode.

Happily, we can fix that. Today we’ll see how to make YouTube play its video in full screen on your iPad, with one tap, using a bookmarklet.

How to customize text in Safari for Mac

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Customize text in Safari.
Customize text in Safari.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You probably spend more time in Safari than in any other app on your Mac. Some people I know almost never use anything else, even typing their blog posts into a text field in the browser. The good news is that Safari is an excellent browser, and makes it really easy to read most sites on the web. Today, though, we’ll see how to make things even easier to read. With a few quick tweaks in Safari’s settings, we can customize text for any website.