Safari’s Find on Page Search Has a New Home in the iOS 18 Betas [CNET]

Here’s where to find the function so you can quickly scan a webpage.

Apple released the second public beta for iOS 18 on July 29, more than a month after the tech giant announced the software at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The update brings many new features to the iPhones of developers and beta testers, including RCS messaging and the ability to lock and hide certain apps. The update also places Safari’s Find on Page search function in a new, easy-to-find spot, so you don’t accidentally send a web page to a friend or family member.

Before iOS 18, if you wanted to use Find on Page to search for a word in your iPhone’s Safari app, you had to tap the Share button — the box with the arrow coming out of it — in the bottom menu of a web page, and then tap Find on Page. But you ran the risk of accidentally sending a web page to someone else, to another app or even posting it on social media. With iOS 18, Find on Page can be found in a new place far from the Share button, so you don’t make that — potentially embarrassing — mistake.

Read more: Everything to Know About iOS 18’s Public Beta

However, iOS 18 is still in beta, and I recommend downloading a beta only on a device other than your primary iPhone. Because this isn’t the final version of iOS 18, the update might be buggy and battery life may be short, so it’s best to keep those troubles on a secondary device. For example, I download betas onto an old iPhone XR to keep any issues away from my iPhone 14 Pro.

Note that the beta is not the final version of iOS 18, so more features could hit your iPhone when iOS 18 is released. Apple said iOS 18 would be released to the public this fall, but there’s no definitive date yet.

Here’s how to locate Find on Page in iOS 18 on Safari.

Where to locate Find on Page

1. Open Safari.
2. Go to a web page.
3. Tap the Reader icon — it looks like a rectangle with two dashes under it on the left side of the address bar. 
4. Tap the icon that looks like a page with a magnifying glass in the new menu.

Find on Page works the same as it did in previous iOS versions. Start typing on the keyboard across the bottom of your screen, and Safari will highlight all instances of what you’re searching for. To the right of your search bar — just above your keyboard — there are up and down arrows you can tap to go to the next instance of the word you’re searching for.

You can also tap the magnifying glass to the left of the search bar to open a menu. This menu has two options: Whole Words and Match Case. Whole Words is the default search, but you can use Match Case if you’re searching for something like the surname King — like a famous horror author. That way, your search doesn’t highlight words like “making” or “taking.”

Once you’re finished, you can tap Done next to the search bar to close the search bar and keyboard. 

For more on iOS 18, here’s my hands-on experience with the public betas, how to get rid of your flashlight from your lock screen and how to customize your home screen. You can also check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet.