IPHONE
How to make Safari close old tabs automatically on an iPhone
In short
Open Settings, tap Apps, then Safari, scroll to Tabs and tap Close Tabs. Choose After One Day, After One Week or After One Month. Safari then closes tabs that have not been viewed recently by itself. Ours was set to Manually, which keeps every tab until you close it.
Safari keeps every tab you open until you close it, and after a few months there can be hundreds. One setting lets Safari tidy up for you.
4 of 4 steps show a real screenshot from our iPhone 17e.
Steps
- 1
Open Settings and tap Apps
Apps is near the bottom of the main Settings list. On iOS 17 and earlier, Safari is in the main list itself.
- 2
Tap Safari
The apps are in alphabetical order, so Safari is under S.
- 3
Scroll to Tabs and tap Close Tabs
It is just below Open Links, the last row before the Profiles heading. Ours was set to Manually. The note below says: allow Safari to automatically close tabs that haven't recently been viewed.
- 4
Choose a time
There are four choices: Manually, After One Day, After One Week and After One Month. The tick shows the active one; the picture shows ours after we tapped After One Month.
If you do not see this option
- Your iPhone runs iOS 17 or earlier. Safari is in the main Settings list itself, not under Apps.
- You want to close all tabs now. To close all tabs in this Tab Group at the same time, in Safari touch and hold the tabs button, then tap Close All [number of] Tabs. Source: Open and close tabs in Safari on iPhone
If this does not work
- A tab you needed was closed. In Safari, tap the tabs button, then touch and hold the plus button and choose from the recently closed tabs.
- Some old tabs stay open. The note says Safari closes tabs that have not recently been viewed. A tab you looked at within the chosen time stays.
- The closed tab is not in the recent list? The recently closed list behind the plus button is short. For a page from longer ago, look it up in Safari's history instead, as closing a tab does not remove the page from your history.
- Nothing seems to close? Safari only closes a tab once it has gone unviewed for the whole period you chose. With After One Month, the first tabs may not disappear for weeks. Check the row still shows your choice, not Manually.
Good to know
Safari can also close all tabs of a Tab Group at once, and reopen a recently closed tab. Apple describes both in the user guide page named below.
From now on, a tab you have not looked at within the chosen period closes by itself. Viewing a tab again resets its clock, so pages you return to regularly stay open. Bookmarks, history and saved passwords are not touched. To stop it, go back to Close Tabs and choose Manually. A shorter tab list also makes the tabs view quicker to scroll. If you open lots of links to read later, see how to open Safari links in the background.
About this guide
- Device
- iPhone
- Shown on
- iOS 27.0.1 (iPhone 17e)
- App
- Settings
- Path
- Settings › Apps › Safari › Close Tabs
- Real screenshots
- 4 of 4 steps
- What we did
- Performed: we made the change on our device and show the result
- Checked
- October 2026
- Sources
- 1 official, linked below
The screenshots are our own, taken on an iPhone 17e running iOS 27.0.1, in dark mode.
What changed: the screenshots are now our own iPhone 17e on iOS 27.0.1, dark mode, and the wording is checked against those screens.
Sources
Links checked October 2026. Menus and features can change with updates.Did this guide work for you?
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