Articles on: iPhone and iPad

Protect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod with Safe Surfer

It’s easy with Safe Surfer to block harmful online content on an iPhone or iPad device. On your first protection installation, it will take around 30 minutes for the full installation, or 45 minutes for the entire guide.

We demonstrate the installation process on an iPhone running iOS 26 (released in 2025), although the steps will be very similar if you are installing on a different kind of device.

Step 1: Visit the Safe Surfer dashboard

If you were directed to this guide from the Safe Surfer online dashboard (My Safe Surfer), skip ahead to step 2.

Visit the Safe Surfer dashboard (https://my.safesurfer.io) on one of your personal devices. Once you've logged in, click the Devices menu on the left-hand sidebar, then click the "New device" option.

Click the "Another mobile, laptop, or desktop device" option.

Click the "iPhone and iPad" option.

Click the "Get the iPhone/iPad app" option.

You can assign this new device to a person, or you can click the Skip button to do this later.

After assigning a user (or skipping), you’ll see a QR code to be scanned within the Safe Surfer app. We’ll use this later on.

Step 2: Install protection

On the device to be protected, tap the App Store app.

Tap the Search option, then tap the search bar and search for the Safe Surfer app. Download the app, and once it has finished downloading, tap the Open button.

Inside the Safe Surfer app, it will ask you for permission to send notifications. Tap the Allow option.

Tap the Continue button.

Tap the "Let's do it!" button.

Enter a friendly name for this device (so that it can be easily identified later), then tap the Next button.

If you signed in with your email address (rather than scanning the QR code on the dashboard), you can assign this device to a person, or you can tap the Skip button to do this later.

Tap the Finish button.

Install configuration profile

Once you've landed on the Protection menu, tap the switch found next to Enable Internet Blocking.

On the card that appears, tap the Download button.

Safe Surfer will take you to the device's default web browser app. On the prompt that appears, tap the Allow option.

In rare cases, you might not see the prompt appear. If this happens, tap the browser's search bar, then tap the blue search button to try visiting the "api.safesurfer.io" link again. The prompt should appear after doing this.

On the Profile Downloaded prompt, tap the Close button.

Go to the device's home screen, then tap the Settings app.

Tap the Profile Downloaded menu.

In rare cases, the Profile Downloaded menu will be found inside a menu called More for Your iPhone (also at the top of the Settings app).

On the card that appears, tap the Install button.

Enter the passcode used to unlock this device.

On the following prompt, tap the Install button.

On the prompt that appears, tap the Install button.

Tap the tick button at the upper-right corner.

Go to the device's home screen, then tap the Safe Surfer app.

After a short moment, when the Safe Surfer app asks, set a PIN to lock the Safe Surfer app.

Install Safari Extension

On the Protection page inside the Safe Surfer app, tap the switch for the Safari Extension feature.

Tap the Open Safari button.

If Safe Surfer reports "Installation Complete", this likely means that you've previously installed the Safari extension on this device (for example, you might see this if you're reinstalling Safe Surfer). You can simply tap the Back option at the upper-left corner and turn on the Social Media Monitoring feature. Once you've done this, you can skip ahead to step 3.

Tap the square and lines button on the search bar.

Tap the Manage Extensions button.

Turn on the switch for the Safe Surfer extension. (If the extension is already turned on, this likely means that you've previously installed the extension for the iCloud account connected to this device. If this is the case, you'll just need to turn the extension off and on to start it.)

If the Safe Surfer listing is greyed out, you probably have the Limit Adult Websites setting applied in Screen Time. You'll need to temporarily turn it off by navigating to the Screen Time menu > Content & Privacy Restrictions > App Store, Media, Web & Games > Web Content > set to Unrestricted. You can then return to Safari and try again.

Tap the tick button.

Tap the Safe Surfer extension listing.

On the prompt that appears, tap the second option, being the Always Allow button.

On the following prompt, tap the second option, being the Always Allow on Every Website button.

Tap the tick button.

Go to the device's home screen, then tap the Safe Surfer app.

Enter your PIN.

Turn on the switch for the Social Media Monitoring feature.

Tap the More menu.

Inside the More menu, there is also an optional feature available to disable images inside Safari if desired.

You can verify the protection installation for this device by visiting our protection check guide. Once you've done this, you can return to this guide.

Step 3: Prevent uninstallation

You can find out how to prevent uninstallation by clicking this link.

Protection complete

Great work! This device is now protected. To start monitoring protected devices, visit our easy-to-use online dashboard.

If you have any other iPhone, iPad, or iPod devices you would like to protect, simply start again from the top of the guide. If you would like to protect a different kind of device, visit our installation guides article.

Updated on: 26/03/2026

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