Pro Tip: How to use Safari’s super-quick pop-up tab history shortcut

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Safari pop-up tab history
Here's Safari's pop-up tab history
Photo: Cult of Mac

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bug When you want to get back to a previously viewed page in Safari on your iPhone, what do you do? Do you keep tapping the back button until you find the page you want?

If so, you can forget that nonsense right now, because there’s a super-quick way to see a list of all the web pages you’ve recently viewed in a Safari browser tab.

How to show a tab’s recent history

To quickly pop open a list of your recently viewed pages, just long-press on the Back arrow in Safari. This trick works on both the iPhone and the iPad, and you can even use it on the Mac. On the iPad you see a popover panel, while on the iPhone the list slides up to take over the entire screen. On Mac, you’ll see a simple list.

In all cases, the list only shows the browser history of the current tab.

safari quick history
Long-press the back button to see the history for the current tab.
Photo: Cult of Mac

To open the page, just tap (or click) on it. Once the page loads, you’ll see that you can do the same trick with Safari’s Forward arrow to see the history in the other direction.

And while you’re in the long-pressing mood, try it with the other icons on the main Safari screen. You might be surprised.

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