Mobile Safari in iOS 7 wants to do its best to help you work more efficiently, so it automatically preloads the top hit from your Web searches. That's great, unless you don't want Safari to auto-load top hits. You can disable that feature, and it's easy to do. Read on to learn how.
To disable top hit preloading in Mobile Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, do this:
- Tap Settings
- Tap Safari
- Select Smart Search Field
- Disable Preload Top Hit
Use Mobile Safari's settings (left) to disable auto preloading your Web search top hits (right)
Now Safari will continue to load search results from your default search engine, but it won't preload the site that appears at the top of the list.
Using the preload feature means you'll see the top hit faster should you tap its link, and that can be a time saver if you know you typically want to select whatever Google, Yahoo!, or Bing serves up. If you rarely select the top hit, however, you're only wasting bandwidth by preloading -- and that can be a big deal if you're working with a limited bandwidth cap.
Blocking top hit preloading also means fewer sites can collect data about you, and if you're concerned about just who might be gathering that information maybe disabling the feature is just the thing for you.