How to Customize Bookmark Icon on Your iPhone

Are you looking for a way to customize the bookmark icons on your iPhone? In this guide, I will show you how to customize Safari bookmarks and home screen shortcuts with custom iPhone bookmark icons, allowing you to easily recognize them.

What Is a Bookmark Icon on an iPhone?

A bookmark icon on an iPhone is the icon of a website shortcut that you add to your home screen using the Safari bookmark feature.

If you want to easily access a website without going through the process of opening your Safari browser, typing the URL into the browser bar, and waiting for it to load, you can add the URL as a shortcut to your home screen.

Then, you can simply click on the shortcut to instantly open the URL in Safari. This is useful when you want to add your banking website to your home screen, for example. The shortcut will appear on your home screen like an app icon, but the difference is that when you click on it, it will open the website in Safari.

However, you may not like the default shortcut icon that appears when you add it from Safari. In this guide, I will show you how to change it.

How to Add a Website Bookmark to Your Home Screen

First, let’s talk about the traditional method of adding a website to your home screen by creating a Safari bookmark.

To do that, you would go to Safari, visit a URL you want to add to your home screen, and then click on the share button. Then, select the “Add to Home Screen” option. You can change the bookmark’s name before adding it to the home screen to make it more memorable.

However, this method only allows you to change the name, not the icon. If you want to learn a different method that allows you to change the icon, continue reading.

Using the Shortcuts App for Custom Bookmark Icons

One option for creating custom bookmark icons is to use the shortcut Customize Web App Icon. Install the shortcut and make sure Show in Share Sheet is enabled in the shortcut details section. Then, visit a URL in Safari, click on the share button, and select Customize Web App Icon instead of Add to Home Screen.

If that method isn’t working for you, use the following method: adding the URL to your home screen as a shortcut.

In the Shortcuts app, you can use a shortcut like Open URL in Chrome to create a shortcut that opens the URL in your browser.

Open Apple Shortcuts and search for Open URL in Chrome or use a shortcut like Open in Safari or Make App From URL.

Or click on the plus sign, select the option to add an action, select the web option, and enter your URL in the Open URL section.

Once you have created any shortcut that opens the URL, select the shortcut from the Shortcuts app, click on the downwards-facing arrow at the top next to the shortcut name, and click on Add to Homescreen. Click on the icon to the left of the name. Select Choose Photo and choose a photo from your gallery to be the new icon.

How to Remove Bookmark Icons from the Home Screen

To remove a bookmark icon from the home screen, simply delete the website shortcut like you would an app. Long-press on it and select the delete option to remove it. You can always add it again later.

If you don’t see the delete option, move the icon to its own screen. Then, long-press on the screen and select Edit Home Screen. Next, see if you can delete the shortcut by pressing the minus button next to it.

If you don’t see the minus button, delete the entire page from your Home Screen (remember, you moved it to its own page). Do that by pressing the edit button in the top right and selecting the edit pages option and deselecting the page with the shortcut on it.

If all else fails, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout. This will reset your home screen layout entirely, so you will need to re-add all apps to it.

Tips for Managing Frequently Used Websites

Adding too many URLs to your homescreen will make things confusing. However, you can organize these shortcuts into folders, just like you can organize apps into folders. Also, make sure to change the names and icons before adding them to your home screen, which you should know how to do after reading this article.

Remember, not all URLs have to be added to your home screen. Instead, you can save them as a bookmark in Safari or Chrome. These bookmarks are stored in the Bookmarks section of your menu without ever adding them to your home screen, and you can organize bookmarks into folders.

Conclusion

I hope this iPhone bookmark guide was helpful! There are two types of bookmarks: the standard bookmarks you keep in the bookmarks folder and the shortcuts you can add to your home screen to make URLs easily accessible. When adding it to your home screen, you can change the icon by using the Shortcuts method instead of the regular Add to Home Screen method.