Reading lengthy web articles, restaurant review pages, hotel listings, and entertainment guides often involves scrolling through extensive background prose just to find an address, phone number, operating hours, or quick summary. In iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, Apple enhanced Safari with Highlights—an intelligent browsing capability that detects essential context on web pages and surfaces them in concise, actionable information cards.
How Safari Highlights Enhances Web Browsing
Highlights uses machine learning models running on Apple silicon to analyse page structure without compromising reader privacy:
- Directions and Location Cards: When browsing a venue or restaurant website, Safari extracts physical addresses and displays an interactive Apple Maps card with one-tap directions.
- Quick Phone and Reservation Links: Automatically surfaces direct tap-to-call numbers and links to table booking or reservation platforms.
- Media and Entertainment Links: When browsing articles discussing films, TV shows, or musical artists, Highlights presents Apple TV, Apple Music, and podcast stream shortcuts.
- Smart Summaries in Reader Mode: Integrates with redesigned Reader view to present a bulleted summary of extensive editorial essays and news reports before you read the full text.
Accessing Highlights in Safari on iPhone (iOS 18)
Using Highlights on an iPhone running iOS 18 or later is straightforward:
- Open Safari on your iPhone and navigate to any business website, travel portal, or editorial article.
- Look at the redesigned unified address bar at the bottom of the screen.
- When Safari detects actionable data, a dynamic indicator icon appears in the address bar. Tap the Page Menu button (the icon situated on the far-left of the URL field).
- A pop-up card labelled Highlights appears above standard controls.
- Review the highlighted data cards:
- Tap Get Directions to open Apple Maps navigation immediately.
- Tap the phone number icon to place a call.
- Tap the reservation button to book a table directly.
Using Highlights in Safari on Mac (macOS Sequoia)
On macOS Sequoia, Safari presents Highlights directly within the top smart search field:
- Launch Safari on your Mac.
- Navigate to a hotel, museum, restaurant, or film review web page.
- In the smart search field, click the Page Menu icon located to the left of the website URL.
- Safari reveals a contextual drawer displaying extracted location maps, contact details, operating hours, and media streaming options.
- Click any interactive element to execute the action in macOS Maps, Phone, or Finder.
Combining Highlights with Reader Mode Summaries
When conducting deep research across dense academic papers or news analyses, combine Highlights with Safari’s Reader mode:
- Table of Contents: In Safari’s Page Menu, select Show Reader. For long-form editorial pieces, Safari generates a dynamic Table of Contents, allowing you to jump straight to specific sub-headings.
- On-Device Privacy: Because page analysis occurs entirely on-device using local Neural Engines, your browsing patterns, search queries, and viewed locations are never transmitted to Apple’s servers.
- Switching Back: To view the unaltered website layout at any time, tap the Page Menu icon and choose Hide Reader or dismiss the Highlights drawer.