How to Save Safari Web Pages to Your Reading List for Offline Viewing

When you find a long, interesting article on your iPhone but don’t have the time to read it immediately, your first instinct might be to leave the Safari tab open or add it to your bookmarks. However, if you subsequently board a flight or ride the subway where you have no cellular connection, standard bookmarks are useless—they simply load a “You are not connected to the internet” error page. Apple solves this problem with Safari’s Reading List feature. When configured correctly, the Reading List doesn’t just save a link to the page; it actually downloads the entire webpage, including all text and images, directly to your device’s storage so you can read it offline.

Enabling Automatic Offline Saving

By default, adding an article to your Reading List might only save the URL, syncing it across your iCloud devices without actually downloading the heavy image assets to save storage space. You must force iOS to always download Reading List items for offline viewing.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Scroll down and tap on Safari.
3. Scroll to the very bottom of the Safari settings menu. Under the “Reading List” section, find the toggle switch for Automatically Save Offline.
4. Toggle the switch to the ON (green) position.

From this point forward, every article you add to the list will be instantly cached to your internal storage.

Adding Articles to the Reading List

Saving an article while browsing is a one-tap process.

1. Open the Safari app and navigate to the article you want to save.
2. Tap the Share button located at the bottom center of the screen (the square icon with an arrow pointing upward).
3. Scroll down the share sheet menu and tap Add to Reading List (it features an icon of eyeglasses).

You can also quickly add links without even opening the page. If you see an interesting link in an email or on a website, simply press and hold the link until a preview menu pops up, then select Add to Reading List.

Accessing Your Offline Articles

When you are offline on a plane or train, you can access your downloaded archive directly inside Safari.

1. Open the Safari app.
2. Tap the Bookmarks button at the bottom of the screen (the icon that looks like an open book).
3. At the top of the menu that appears, tap the middle tab featuring the Eyeglasses icon. This is your Reading List.
4. Articles you haven’t read yet will appear at the top. Simply tap any article to open it. It will load instantly, even in Airplane mode.

Managing and Deleting Read Articles

Because offline articles consume physical storage space on your iPhone, you should delete them once you have finished reading them.

1. In the Reading List menu, find an article you want to remove.
2. Swipe left across the title of the article.
3. A red Delete button will appear. Tap it to permanently remove the downloaded file from your device.

If you want to clear out multiple articles quickly, tap the Edit button in the bottom right corner of the Reading List, select the articles you want to remove, and tap Delete.