iOS 18: How to Use Safari's New Highlights Feature - MacRumorsOpen MenuShow RoundupsShow Forums menuVisit ForumsOpen Sidebar
Skip to Content

iOS 18: How to Use Safari's New Highlights Feature

by

Safari in iOS 18 introduces a new feature called Highlights, which is designed to enhance your browsing experience by intelligently surfacing key information from webpages. The tool uses machine learning to identify and extract the most relevant details, and present them to you in an easily accessible format.

safari icon blue banner
Think of Highlights as a kind of smart assistant within Safari, saving you time and effort by eliminating the need to manually search through lengthy web content. Whether you're looking up a restaurant, researching a historical figure, or checking out a new movie, Highlights can often quickly provide the essential information you need.

The feature is particularly useful for various types of content:

  • For businesses and locations, it can display address details, operating hours, and quick access to directions.
  • When browsing pages about people, it might show brief biographical information.
  • For entertainment content, it can offer direct links to play songs or summarize reviews for movies and TV shows.

Highlights aims to streamline your browsing by providing these bite-sized pieces of information right when you need them.

ios 18 safari highlights
Here's how to use the new feature in iOS 18:

  1. Open Safari and navigate to a supported webpage.
  2. Look for a purple sparkle over the tool icon in the browser bar. This indicates Highlights are available.
  3. Tap the sparkle to open the Highlights window.
  4. Review the summarized information presented in the Highlights window, and interact with the information you need, such as tapping on directions or playback links.

By keeping an eye out for the sparkle icon as you browse, you can take full advantage of this time-saving feature and quickly access the most pertinent information from websites. Note that Highlights is currently only available in the U.S. and only works for English websites.

Top Rated Comments

jz0309 Avatar
23 months ago
“Open Safari and navigate to a supported webpage”

How would one know that a webpage is supported???
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
23 months ago
didn't work on this article
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
23 months ago
I am not enabling this feature since I don’t want to share my browsing with Apple.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
NightFox Avatar
23 months ago
I always feel like these features are designed for the way people use the internet in adverts, and not how and why the internet gets used in real life. Maybe I'm just not using it right though.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
23 months ago
Some commenters seem to be confusing "summary" with highlight. This article is about highlights - from apple.com "Safari will automatically detect relevant information on a page and highlight it as you browse. Highlights display helpful information like directions and quick links to learn more about people, music, movies, and TV shows." The example given in the article does work. It "highlights" the location of the hotel. As you can see in the screen capture I just did on 15.1 beta4.

Attachment Image
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
23 months ago

Now let’s use AI to extract from AI written webpages. What could go wrong?:)
This is client side, but yep it’s a valid concern! Hopefully there will be standardised tags/markup to signify server side AI content is machine generated. Without that the web will turn into some kind of self referencing nonsense soup, not that it isn’t close to that already.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

Aston Martin CarPlay Ultra Screen

Apple Says CarPlay Ultra is Coming to These Vehicle Brands

Thursday May 21, 2026 11:53 am PDT by
Last year, Apple launched CarPlay Ultra, the long-awaited next-generation version of its CarPlay software system for vehicles. Nearly a year later, CarPlay Ultra is still limited to Aston Martin's latest luxury vehicles, but that should change fairly soon. In May 2025, Apple said many other vehicle brands planned to offer CarPlay Ultra, including Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis. CarPlay Ultra...
iphone 18 pro blue%402x

iPhone 18 Pro: Dark Cherry, Light Blue, and Dark Gray Chassis Leaked [Update]

Thursday June 4, 2026 5:18 am PDT by
Update: Since publication, new information has come to light suggesting the images have been AI-manipulated and are not in fact iPhone 18 Pro chassis parts. The original article follows. The color options Apple is reportedly planning for the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ Max have appeared online today in the form of images of chassis parts of unknown authenticity....
iOS 27 All the New App Features

iOS 27: All the Rumored App Features

Wednesday June 3, 2026 3:48 pm PDT by
Siri is getting a major overhaul in iOS 27, but Apple also has some big updates planned for apps like Camera, Photos, and Wallet. There are multiple new AI features in the works, plus some non-AI upgrades. Camera Apple is moving Visual Intelligence from the Camera Control button to the Camera app in iOS 27, according to Bloomberg. There will be a Siri mode that will be available alongside...