iPhone (IOS 9.2) - open new tab in background in Safari?

Factual Questions
1

Hi all,

I’m using an iPhone 6, running IOS 9.2. When I’m browsing a page like a news site or a forum, with a number of links or stories or threads on one page, my default behaviour is to work my way through the page opening any interesting-looking links in a new tab as I go. Then I start reading the tabs one at a time. I’ve done this as long as tabbed browsing has been a thing, and it’s pretty ingrained by now.

Safari on the iPhone is interrupting this workflow pretty badly. Pressing and holding a link, and selecting “open in new tab” does so, but also switches to the new tab as well, removing focus from the page I was viewing.

This is annoying. It sounds trivial, but when I’m opening lots of new tabs, the constant tab-switching becomes a real flow killer. I’ve been through the settings for Safari and Googled a bit, but I haven’t seen any option to configure Safari to open new tabs “quietly” in the background. Am I missing something, or is there a setting I’ve missed? I’m pretty sure that Safari on my iPad doesn’t do this - it opens the tab in the background without interrupting me. (I’m not sure what version of IOS the iPad is running as I don’t have it to hand).

If it’s not possible to open tabs in the background on iPhone, does anyone have recommendations for alternative browsers on IOS that can?
Thanks,

Rich

2

From your home screen:
Settings ->
Safari ->

Under General change “Open Links” from “in New Tab” to “in Background.”

3

Thank you!

Worked a charm. :slight_smile:

4

With the OP answered, I’ll ask a follow-up. Is there any way to force Safari to actually load the background page? When I switch to a background tab, the page starts loading right then. Part of the point of opening things in background tabs is so that I don’t have to suffer the loading of every. single. page. (This is a more general caching gripe, as it happens when navigating back to a previous page in the same tab.)