In just a few steps you can put your favorite website on the home screen of your iPhone or iPad. Handy if your favorite site doesn't have its own app. This way you immediately have quick access and sometimes there are more benefits thanks to web apps.
The home screen of your iPhone is the place where you can launch your favorite apps. Here you will find all the apps you have downloaded from the App Store, but you can also add a website to this home screen with a handy function. The website will then appear, including a recognizable icon, between your other apps so that you can open it quickly, without having to open Safari first. Everything about how to put a website on your home screen, what the options are and which browsers it works with, can be read in this tip.
- Add website
- Browsers
- Notifications
Add website to home screen on iPhone
Such a shortcut to a website on the home screen is called a web clip and looks like a regular app icon. Only when you tap on the icon will you notice that you are not opening an app, but that a web page is opening in Safari. Some web apps are so cleverly designed that you can barely tell they're a web page. With these optimized sites, standard Safari menu buttons disappear and the web app even appears as an individual app in the app switcher. Buttons and other interactive features give the impression that it is a real app. It is not possible to see in advance to what extent a website has been optimized for this.
This is how you put a website on the home screen of your iPhone.
- Open the page from which you shortcut.
- Tap the share icon (square with an up arrow) in the lower task bar.
- Indicate that you want to add the website to your home screen using the Add option on the home screen.
- Type a (short) name or choose the suggestion that appears on the screen.
- Tap Add.
- The shortcut (web clip) will now appear as an icon on your home screen.
The icon used is a high-resolution version of the favorites icon that websites have added themselves in their code. It is not possible to set a different icon yourself if a website has not added a nice icon of its own.
In addition to the fact that the website is on your home screen, you can also open it via Spotlight and via the alphabetical app library. The app will only be placed in a category folder in the app library.
See also 
How the App Library works on the iPhone and iPad
Have you installed many apps and do you regularly lose the overview? App Library automatically organizes your apps into categories. You can read more about it here.
Which browsers do the web clips work with?
By default, the function works with the Safari browser that is present on every iPhone and iPad. As soon as you tap on such a shortcut on the home screen, Safari will immediately open to visit the website. Starting with iOS 16.4, third-party browser apps will also support this feature. As a result, you can also add such a shortcut to the home screen from Chrome, for example, so that Chrome is not opened as soon as you tap the icon of the site. With iOS 16.4 or newer, the shortcut also always opens in the browser app you set as default.
See also 
Choose the default browser on iPhone and iPad: this is how it works
Always stuck with Safari? no! You can choose a default browser on the iPhone and iPad. Go to the internet with Chrome, Edge or another browser by default. They open automatically when you click on a link.
Get notifications from websites on your home screen
From iOS 16.4 it is also possible, if a website supports it, to receive notifications. These are the same kind of push messages you get from apps, but they come from websites. You can only receive notifications if you have added the app to your home screen via the steps above. You manage the settings for the notifications, just like with apps, via Settings > Notifications. The website supporting the feature will simply appear here in the settings among the other apps.
In short, these are the advantages of adding a website to your iPhone home screen:
- Quick access to your favorite sites, as if it were an app
- Also can be accessed via Spotlight and app library
- Optimized web app, if available
- Ability to receive notifications (iOS 16.4 or newer)
Also read us article with the best tips to view your favorite websites in Safari on your iPhone and iPad.
See also 
How to Quickly Open Favorite Websites in Safari on iPhone and iPad
A setting your own home page is not possible in Safari on the iPhone. But there are three other ways to quickly access your favorite websites, for example with a bookmark or shortcut on your home screen. This tip explains how to do that.