How to Close All of Your Safari Tabs at Once on iPhone or iPad

There are some iOS gestures and tricks that have been around forever, but remain relatively hidden because they're hard to find unless you know about them.

Closing all of the tabs in your Safari browser on an iOS device is one such trick -- it's simple if you know how to do it, but it's a gesture you might not know exists.

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Here's how to do it:

Open up Safari.

Long press on the "Tabs" icon denoted by two squares. On iPhones, it's at the bottom of the browser in portrait mode or at the top in landscape mode. On the iPad, it's at the top.

Select Close All Tabs.

Alternatively, you can single tap on the Tabs icon to bring up the browser window view, and then long press on "Done" to bring up the same "Close All Tabs" interface.

That's all there is to it. Safari will let you know how many tabs are currently open, and it will close each and every one after the Close All Tabs option is tapped.

Because it's so easy to open a new tab when browsing without meaning to on an iOS device, the Close All Tabs option is super handy for getting rid of all those open browser windows in one quick go.

Top Rated Comments

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bbfc

11 months ago

Well you learn something new everyday!

Rating: 5 Votes

philipk

11 months ago

Are there really MacRumors readers that don’t know this?

Yes, I am a regular here and didn’t know it. There are a lot of shortcuts in iOS, macOS, and other software programs that most people do not know.

MacRumor readers may be well informed but there still much that they (we) do not know.

Rating: 4 Votes

philipk

11 months ago

Thanks for sharing the shortcut. It will be real helpful to me in the future. Especially when I am cleaning up my wife’s iPhone. She usually has 20 to 30 tabs open.

Rating: 3 Votes

Lopezzi

11 months ago

Thanks for sharing the shortcut. It will be real helpful to me in the future. Especially when I am cleaning up my wife’s iPhone. She usually has 20 to 30 tabs open.

My wife is notorious for having lots of tabs open. I asked her to perform the steps and then tell me what the top option says. She gets back to me, "It says Close All 117 tabs". :eek: Hahaha.

Rating: 2 Votes

artfossil

11 months ago

Are there really MacRumors readers that don’t know this?

Some of us (raises hand) are lazy/distracted/forgetful and appreciate getting useful information—even if we’re supposed to know it (and maybe did at one time).

Rating: 2 Votes

Relentless Power

11 months ago

Are there really MacRumors readers that don’t know this?

Clearly some of the responses in this thread indicate that they did not know how to close all the tabs at once. The iPhone has a lot a little features others were not aware of and its helpful to have a brief article explaining this.

Rating: 1 Votes

smirking

8 months ago

I wish I knew this last week. I had to close two years worth of tabs on my dad's phone when I helped him with a tech problem.

Rating: 1 Votes

dannynjoni

11 months ago

Are there really MacRumors readers that don’t know this?

S.H.A.M.E. (Should Have Already Mastered Everything) on me for not knowing this!

And kudos for this write up it’s much appreciated!! Thank you :)
[doublepost=1515015297][/doublepost]I had 54 tabs

Rating: 1 Votes

NMBob

11 months ago

Why doesn’t this use force touch? iOS has more and more UX inconsistencies.

Because my iPad Air on iOS10 doesn't have Force Touch. And, yes, there are a ton of inconsistencies in iOS. Feature bloat and mystery meat navigation abounds.

Rating: 1 Votes

Xavier

11 months ago

Wow! I have wanted this forever and it's been there all along!

Rating: 1 Votes

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