Pet & Animal: How to Set Your Homepage

Thursday, 16 April 2015

How to Set Your Homepage

Your browser's homepage is the page that appears when you first open the browser. Most browser's let you set any page you want as your homepage. Some browser, such as Chrome, allow you to open multiple pages at once when the browser starts. Some mobile browsers, such as Safari, don't allow you to set a homepage, but there are workarounds.

Steps

Chrome

Click the Chrome Menu button (☰). This is located in the upper-right corner of the window.

Click "Settings". This will open the Settings menu in a new tab.

Choose your "On startup" option. There are several options available that let you customize the Chrome startup.
- Open the New Tab page. This will display the Google search bar and a selection of your most frequented sites.
- Continue where you left off. This will reopen all of the tabs that you previously had open when you closed Chrome.
- Open a specific page or set of pages. This will allow you to set what websites appear when you start Chrome. Click the "Set pages" link to set which pages you want to open. Each page you add will open in a new tab.^[1]

Internet Explorer

Click the Gear button. This is located in the upper-right corner of the Internet Explorer window. If you are using an older version of Internet Explorer, click the "Tools" menu instead.
- If you don't have a menu bar, press to make it appear.

Select "Internet options". This is usually located at the bottom of the menu.

Add the sites you want to open. In the tab, you add the sites you want to set as your homepage(s). You can open multiple sites by adding each one on a new line. Each site will open in a separate tab.
- Internet Explorer 6 does not support tabs, so you will only be allowed to set one page as your homepage.
- You can set your homepage to the current page by clicking
- Click when you're finished.^[2]

Firefox

Click the Firefox Menu button (☰). This is located in the upper-right corner of the window.

"Select "Options". It has a gear icon in the menu.

Select the General tab. If the General tab at the top of the Options window is not active, select it.

Choose your startup option. You have three options for when Firefox starts Use the drop-down menu to choose which one you want:
- Show my homepage. This will open your desired homepage. You can set it in the "Home Page" field.
- Show a blank page. A Blank tab will open when Firefox starts.
- Show my windows and tabs from last time. This will display the windows and tabs that were still open the last time Firefox was closed.

Save your changes. Click to save your homepage settings.

Drag and drop a website onto the Home icon. When you're browsing, you can set any website you are currently visiting as the homepage by dragging the website icon from the address bar onto the Home button in the Firefox toolbar.^[3]

Safari for Mac OS X

Click the Safari menu. Select "Preferences".

Select the General tab. If the General tab at the top of the Options window is not active, select it.

Choose your startup option. You have several options for when Firefox starts Use the drop-down menu to choose which one you want:
- Home Page. This will open your desired homepage when Safari starts. You can set your homepage in the "Home page" field.
- Empty Page. This will open a blank page when Safari starts. You can use the page that is currently open by clicking
- Same Page. This will reload the page that was open when safari was last closed.
- Bookmarks. This will open a list of your bookmarks when Safari starts.

Safari for iOS

Navigate to your desired homepage. There is no way to set a traditional homepage in Safari, as it simply loads the last page that was open. Instead, you will be creating a shortcut to your desired homepage on your IOS device's Home screen.

Click the Share button. This is located at the bottom of the screen on an iPhone, or at the top of an iPad. It looks like a box with an arrow pointing out the top.

Select "Add to Home Screen". This will add an app icon to your Home screen that will launch Safari and load the website immediately.

Use the new icon to start Safari. You will be taken to the page as soon as the app starts.^[4]

Android

Open the browser. You can change the homepage on your default browser on most Android devices. The browser is usually called "Browser" or "Internet".
- You cannot change the homepage for the mobile version of Chrome. Instead, your previously-open tabs will be displayed, or a blank tab with links to your most frequented sites will be shown.

Press the Menu button. This may be a button on the screen or a physical button on your Android device.

Tap "Settings". Then tap "General".

Tap "Set homepage". You will be given multiple options.
- Current page. This will set the page that is currently open as the homepage.
- Blank page. This will load a blank page.
- Default page. This will load the default page, which usually has a Google search bar.
- Most visited sites. This will open a list of your most frequented sites.
- Custom page. This will let you manually set the page.^[5]

Opera

Click the Opera menu. This is located in the upper-left corner of the window.

Select "Settings>Preferences". This will open the Settings menu in a new tab.

Choose your "On startup" option. There are several options to choose from to customize the way Opera starts.
- Continue where I left off. This will reopen all of the tabs that you previously had open when you closed Opera.
- Open the start page. This will open the Speed Dial page, which will display the Google search bar and a selection of your most frequented sites.
- Open a specific page or set of pages. This will allow you to set what websites appear when you start Opera. Click the "Set pages" link to set which pages you want to open. Each page you add will open in a new tab.^[6]