Safari profiles arrived in iOS 17 and are the easiest fix for a common annoyance: a website can only know you as one person at a time. Create a second profile and you get a second set of cookies, so you can be signed in twice.
They are free, built in, and most people who need them do not know they exist. They also stop at a specific line, and it is worth knowing where that line is before you build a routine on top of them.
What goes in a profile
Apple’s list, and it is more than people expect:
- History — each profile keeps its own.
- Cookies and website data — this is the part that makes two logins possible.
- Tab Groups — not shared between profiles.
- Favourites — each profile has its own set.
- Extensions — available to every profile, but switched on or off per profile.
The practical effect is that switching profile switches every signed-in session at once. You are not logging out of anything; the other profile’s session is simply still there when you go back.
What stays shared
Saved passwords. The password manager belongs to the system, not to a profile. That is usually what you want — you still get autofill in both — but it means a profile is not a boundary around your credentials.
Everything outside Safari. A profile is a Safari feature. It does nothing for a native app, for files you download and save, for photos, or for anything you keep in another app.
Your other devices. Profiles follow your Apple Account, so the ones you make on iPhone show up in Safari on any iPad or Mac signed in to the same account. Convenient if that is what you wanted, surprising if it is not.
The two limits
A profile has no lock. Anyone holding your unlocked phone can switch profiles from the tab overview and read what is in the other one. Profiles organise browsing; they do not protect it. (Private Browsing is the separate feature that can be locked behind Face ID — but private tabs are designed to forget, which makes them a poor place to stay signed in.)
A profile is not an identity. It holds the browsing half of a separation and nothing else. If your work and personal lives are genuinely separate on one phone, the notes, photos and screenshots that belong to each are also separate — and they all still land in one shared pile.
Setting one up
In Settings, open Safari — on newer iOS versions Safari sits under Apps — and choose New Profile. Give it a name and an icon, and it is ready.
To switch, open the tab overview in Safari; profiles sit alongside your Tab Groups. A new profile starts with no cookies, so sites will ask you to sign in the first time. That is the point.
When profiles are the right answer
If you want two logins to the same site, you browse on your phone, and you are not trying to keep anything from someone who has your unlocked phone — profiles are the answer, they cost nothing, and you should use them.
If you also want the rest of a separation — a lock, notes and photos that belong to one side and not the other — that is where the built-in feature stops. I ended up building SideSpace for it: several Spaces on one iPhone, each with its own web sessions, notes, photos and lock, and Private Spaces that are not listed at all until you unlock them.
The broader comparison, including private browsing and the second-browser trick, is in how to stay signed in to two accounts on the same site on iPhone.
What a profile separates is documented by Apple in Create multiple Safari profiles on iPhone. Checked September 2026 — Apple moves this around between iOS versions, so verify the Settings path on your own device.