Safari is one of the most used web browsers in the world. It’s an integral part of iOS, and it comes preinstalled on all iPhones and iPads.
The Safari browser is safe, quick, and has a friendly interface.
If you can’t find Safari on your iPhone, however, you may have accidentally deleted it. If you’re wondering how to reinstall Safari on your iPhone, you’ve come to the right place.
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Can You Uninstall Safari From an iPhone?
Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay
No. Safari is an integral part of the iPhone’s operating system, and there is no way to uninstall it like you can uninstall apps you download yourself from the App Store. The Safari browser is critical for the smooth operation of iOS.
However, there are ways to delete Safari from an iPhone without actually uninstalling it.
If you can’t find Safari on your phone, you may have deleted it in one of three ways:
- You might have deleted it from the home screen, but it may still show up in the app library.
- In addition to that, you may have made Chrome or another browser your default browser, so your phone is no longer using Safari to open web links.
- Finally, if you can’t find Safari anywhere on your phone, even in the app library, you may have disabled it. It’s possible to do that in the Content & Privacy Restrictions settings of your iPhone.
If you’re using someone else’s phone, they may have accidentally restricted and disabled Safari.
Either way, it’s possible to get Safari to start showing up again.
I will go over the three scenarios above and explain how to fix each one. Let’s start with the first one.
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How to Get Safari Back on Your Home Screen?
If you accidentally deleted Safari from your home screen, don’t worry. Getting it back on your home screen is pretty easy.
Start by going to your app library. You can do that by swiping left on your home screen until you pass all the “home screen pages” and arrive at your app library.
You will be able to find Safari in your “Utilities” folder.
Open your Utilities folder, long-press on Safari, and then drag it to your home screen.
You can place it on any of your home screen pages or in the bottom bar that appears across all pages. There is only enough space for four apps on the bottom home screen bar.
If you can’t find your Utilities folder, use the search bar at the top of your app library to search for “Safari.” Once it shows up, long-press on it and drag it to your home screen.
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How to Make Safari Your Default Browser?
If you made another browser your default browser, you can change that pretty easily.
To start, open your settings and scroll down until you see Safari. Apps will be divided into two sections: The preinstalled apps will come first, while third-party apps you downloaded later will show up on a different list.
Safari will show up on the first list. Apps will be listed in alphabetical order, to scroll until you find apps that start with S.
Then, click on “Safari.” At the top of your screen, you will see an option that says, “Default Browser App,” along with the app that you selected as the default browser.
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Click on “Default Browser App” to see which browser is your default (in the screenshot below, it’s Chrome). Then, tap on “Safari” to select it as your default browser.
Note that if you don’t see the “Default Browser App” option, it’s because Safari already is your default browser app.
How to Enable Safari After Disabling It in the Content Restrictions Settings?
Finally, if you couldn’t find Safari in the app library, it’s probably because it’s been disabled. It’s still installed on your phone, and it might still be working in the background to make sure iOS functions smoothly, but you won’t be able to open it and use it to browse the web directly.
To start, open your settings. Scroll down until you see “Screen Time.”
It will show up towards the top of your settings, after Notifications, Sounds, and Focus. Those options will show up after the main Wifi, Bluetooth, Cellular, and other connectivity settings.
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Click on “Screen Time.” Then, scroll down a bit and click on “Content & Privacy Restrictions.”
Towards the top of your screen, click on “Allowed Apps.”
Find Safari towards the top of your screen. You may see it toggled off; toggle the switch to green to allow it again.
Safari will start showing up again in the app library. Go to the app library and drag it to your home screen, as I explained above.
Note that if you or your parents set a passcode for the content restriction settings, you will need to enter that passcode after clicking on “Allowed Apps” before you can enable Safari.
If you set the passcode yourself but have forgotten it, you can recover it through your Apple ID. It’s a four-digit passcode, so it may be the same as your regular screen lock passcode if it’s a four-digit code as well.
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What If There’s a Third-Party Parental Control App Blocking Safari?
Note that in addition to iPhone’s built-in parental controls (the Content & Privacy Restrictions settings), Safari may also be blocked by a third-party parental control app.
If that is the case, the process for unblocking Safari will depend on which parental control app is installed. You may need a password to unblock Safari and other blocked apps or to uninstall the parental control app altogether.
In that situation, you’ll have to get help from the person who installed the parental control app in the first place.
Alternatives to Safari
If you can’t recover the passcode you set for the Screen Time controls, or if there is a parental control app blocking access to Safari and which you can’t get around, there are other browser apps you can use as an alternative to Safari. That’s providing you didn’t block all web browsers.
You’ll need to be able to download additional apps. In the parental control settings, it’s possible to block all additional app downloads, so if app installs are blocked, you’ll still need the passcode to download other browsers.
Here are my top recommended alternatives to Safari for iPhone:
- Google Chrome: Chrome has the largest market share of all web browsers. It’s fast and user-friendly.
- Firefox: Firefox is another popular browser.
- Firefox Focus: Firefox Focus is an excellent choice if you like Firefox but want additional privacy. It blocks trackers by default.
- Opera: Opera is a fast, light browser based on Chromium.
- Brave Browser: Brave is a browser focused on privacy, blocking ad trackers and loading web pages quickly.
- DuckDuckGo: DuckDuckGo is a web browser and search engine that offers a higher level of privacy than Google, as it doesn’t track your activity.
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Wrapping It Up: How to Reinstall Safari Back on an iPhone
While you can’t really uninstall Safari in the first place, you might have removed it from your home screen or disabled it.
You can enable it from your Privacy & Content Restrictions settings, although you may need to enter a passcode. You can also put it back on the home screen by finding it in the app library and dragging it back to the home screen.
Scott L. Macarthur is a marketing consultant and an online author. He is mostly engaged in providing his expertise to startups and SMBs. He is also an author on TheNextWeb.