Safari icons

[LannyC]

I just updated my iPad 10 to iPadOS 18. How do I get my large Safari start page favorites icons back?

 

[twerppoet]

Do you mean the ones yiu get when you swipe all the way to the left, where the screen blurs and you have nothing but widgets?

If so, you were probably using old widgets from a few years back. Support for them has been discontinued.

Long press on the screen, then select the (+) button at the top left. With a little luck you'll find a newer widget that will be close enough for what you want.

Keep in mind that you can now add widgets to any screen, and place them pretty much anywhere on the screen. You may prefer that if you give it a try. It's still kind of finicky to arrainge.

 

[LannyC]

No, not widgets on my Home screen. I set my Safari default start page to show my Favorites bookmarks. They are now about 1/4 their former size (half as wide, half as tall). I can’t find a pref to reverse this silly default.

Lately, Apple seems to include more useless “features” and fewer user choices with each release. I guess by this point I should have learned to just stop updating.

 

[Aerofly]

I noticed that when I first updated my iPad Pro to iPadOS 18 my default ‘start page’ favourites icons didn’t load properly and all I got were ‘grey squares’ that looked like placemarks.
However after leaving them like that for a while (can’t quite remember how long it took) they all suddenly appeared as normal icons again.

 

[scifan57]

Do you mean like this?

Tap the search bar just to the left of the reload icon. That will bring up the start page.

 

[LannyC]

Here’s my start page.

There used to be two rows of six icons. Now one row of twelve, and my muscle memory is struggling to cope.

 

[LannyC]

I just looked at the new Photos app. Wow, they just can’t restrain themselves from making everything different and more complicated for no good reason. I guess someone needs to justify his job with busy work.

IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T “FIX” IT,

 

[twerppoet]

Tap on Edit, and turn Suggestions back on. This was the second row of icons you mentioned. Besides being able to turn the five sections on/off, you can also drag them into whatever order you like.

Warning, they no longer look like icons. Instead you've got some tiles. They take some getting used to, but they do offer more information.

If what you are missing really was in Favorites, your Safari Favorites folder may have changed. You can change that in Settings > Apps > Safari > General > Favorites.

The Favorites folder is part of your Bookmarks, and can be customized by going to the folder in the sidebar and choosing Edit at the bottom.

 

[LannyC]

You seem to be having trouble understanding the issue. That row of 12 icons in my screenshot is the contents of my Favorites bookmarks folder. Before iPadOS 18, those icons were larger and wrapped into 2 rows. Do I need to Photoshop a “before” image for you?

 

[twerppoet]

Sorry. I should have read your posts more closely.

 

[scifan57]

I just checked my start page and it looks like this.
Is this what you mean?

 

[Aerofly]

I’ve just managed to take this screenshot of the start page on my old iPad Air running iOS15.8.2. I notice the icons were quite a bit bigger then with only 6 available across the screen in landscape mode, so I assume this is what you are referring to. I imagine that Apple, in their wisdom, decided to reduce the size of the icons to maximise the use of the space.
I do agree it would have been nice to be able to make the icons larger. Perhaps they could have included it as an option as part of the Accessibility options……..we’ll probably never know the real reason.

 

[JonBike]

I just moved to an iPad 10th Gen and have the same issue that’s being discussed here…

Way more icons per row than I’m used to. Makes it look crowded and not nearly as easy to tap on one. Has anyone found a way to have more rows with fewer icons?