Want to browse the Internet on your iPhone or iPad anonymously? Sometimes, you might not want your Internet browsing activity to be saved to your browser history – especially if you’re using a shared device. Luckily, there’s an easy way to surf the Internet privately and anonymously on an iPhone or iPad, and in this article, we’ll show you how to do it. Both iPhone and iPad run the same iOS operating system, so the instructions will work exactly the same for both. The images in this article are screenshots from an iPhone 6S running iOS 10.2.1.
To browse the Internet anonymously on iPhone or iPad
1. Open the safari web browser app on your device.
The first step in anonymous browsing on your iOS device is to open up your web browser app.
2. Tap the square button in the bottom right corner of your screen.
This will allow you to see more options at the bottom of your screen.
3. In the bottom left corner, tap Private.
This will switch your Safari browser over to private browsing mode. Your browsing activity will not be saved to your browser history when using this mode. Once turned on, you’ll notice the border of the browser window turn from white to black.
4. Tap the Plus Sign at the bottom to open a new tab.
You can open a new page by tapping on the Plus Sign button. You can even have multiple tabs open at the same time.
5. Browse the web anonymously.
That’s it! You have your browser set to private mode, and you can now surf the Internet without your history being saved.
6. To return to your normal browser, tap the square button and Private again.
This way you can exit private browsing mode in case you don’t want anyone else knowing you were browsing the web anonymously.
Now that we’ve covered the instructions for how to browse privately, we have a few tips for you to keep in mind when using private browsing mode on your iPhone or iPad.
3 tips for anonymous browsing on iPhone or iPad
1. Keep in mind that your internet provider, boss, etc. will still be able to see your browsing activity even if you use private browsing.
Even if you use private browser settings so that your history is not saved, your Internet provider will still be able to see your activity, and likely your boss can as well if you’re browsing at work. Having your iPhone/iPad browser set to private does not guarantee that nobody will know what you’ve looked at online.
2. Turn off auto-fill settings on your iPhone/iPad so your personal information won’t be saved to your browser.
To make sure that your iPhone/iPad doesn’t save information like credit card numbers, addresses, and passwords, make sure you have the “Auto-fill” setting turned off. You can access these settings by going to Settings > Safari > Auto-fill.
3. Set your browser back to normal when you’re finished browsing.
If you share your device with a family member and you don’t want them to see that you used private browsing, be sure to set it back to normal when you’re done browsing anonymously.
That’s all you need to know about how to surf the Internet anonymously on your iPhone or iPad. If you’d like to learn more about Internet privacy and safety, check out our free Internet privacy course and our Internet safety course. In these courses, we have more tutorials where you can learn how to browse privately on your desktop computer with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Internet Explorer.
