Mac Treat #74: Create a Website Icon App on Your iPhone
…No App Store Required!
Note: This Mac Treat is specifically for the iPhone and iPod touch.
The App Store is great—it’s full of hundreds of different useful, fun and informative applications (save for the alarmingly large number of fart apps), and includes numerous applications dedicated to websites you normally visit through your computer’s browser.
So, if you have found that your favorite websites haven’t yet created an iPhone or iPod touch-specific application in the App Store, never fear—you can make one yourself.
Here’s how:
- Using Safari on your device, navigate to the page you want to make an icon
- Select the “+” symbol at the bottom of the menu
- Select “Add to Home Screen”
This will add an icon to your iPhone/iPod touch as a shortcut to the page of your choice.
Most sites will display the standard webpage (only smaller), but some actually feature an optimized interface for iPhone/iPod touch. The optimized sites offer a better browsing experience on a small screen as well as—my favorite part—an attractive icon.
Some of my favorite optimized sites so far are Pocket Tweets (to keep up with Twitter) and Flickr (to manage my Flickr photostream). Each features a nice icon in addition to a dedicated iPhone/iPod touch interface.