Adding a Web Site to the Home Screen on a Mobile Device

Most mobile devices and tablets have the ability to pin a shortcut to a web site as an icon on your home or start screen. If you are using the Companion Web Portal on your device, you may wish to create a shortcut icon to the portal site on your home screen for easy access.

Here is how you can do that on the major popular operating systems:

Android

Launch the Chrome browser and open the web site or page you want to pin to your home screen.

Tap on the menu, and tap the 'Add to homescreen' option. This will add an icon to your home screen (you'll be able to enter a name for the new shortcut) which you can then move around like any other app icon.

Tapping on the new icon will cause Chrome for Android to open the web site as a separate "web app", meaning it will show in the app switcher like any other app, and won't have the browser interface cluttering up the screen.

Other popular browsers such as Firefox also have similar features to add to the home screen.

Apple iOS

Launch the Safari browser and open the web site or page you want to pin to your home screen.

Tap on the share button on the toolbar (looks like a square with an upwards pointing arrow on it). It's on the toolbar at the top of the screen on an iPad, and at the bottom of the screen on an iPhone or iPod Touch. Tap on the "Add to Home Screen" icon in the Share menu.

You'll be prompted to enter a name for the shortcut and it will be added to the homescreen as an icon which can be moved around (including into app folders) like any other app icon. (To create folders, touch and drag an app's icon onto another app's icon and hold for a few seconds.)

Tapping on the new icon will load the web site inside a normal tab in the Safari web browser.

Due to security limitations in Apple's iOS, only Apple's Safari browser is allowed to do this. Other popular browsers such as Chrome for iOS do not offer this feature.

Windows Phone

Launch the Internet Explorer browser and open the web site you want to pin.

Tap the More (...) button and tap "Pin to Start" in the menu that appears. This will add the page as a tile to the Start screen on your device.

Tap on the tile in the Start screen and the web site will open in Internet Explorer.