How to copy a whole web page's text on iPhone

Published 2026-08-28. All measurements were taken in the WebKit that ships with iOS 26.5 (WKWebView at iPhone viewport width).

Safari on iPhone has no "Select All" for a web page.

What takes one ⌘A on a Mac becomes a long press and a drag of two blue handles on an iPhone. The longer the article, the worse it gets.

There are four ways around it. If you want it free, use the Shortcut (method 3). If you do this often, or you keep losing parts of the page, use an extension (method 4). Below, each one with what it can't do.

Method 1: Long press and drag (built in)

1. Touch and hold anywhere in the text
2. A word gets selected, with a handle at each end
3. Drag the handles to widen the selection
4. Tap Copy

What it can't do. There is no way to select the whole page at once. Dragging a handle past the edge auto-scrolls, but on a long article that takes a while and the selection can collapse, sending you back to the start. Separate blocks — call-outs, tables, code — often stop the selection from continuing past them.

Note: the "Select All" menu item only appears where text is editable, such as a text field or a note. It does not appear when you are reading a web page.

Method 2: Turn on Reader first

1. Tap the page menu to the left of the URL (on iOS 18 the same spot is "AA")
2. Choose Show Reader
3. With the ads and menus gone, long press and select the body text

What it's good for. Less to scroll past, so the handles travel a shorter distance and the selection is less likely to break.

What it can't do. Reader is not available on every page — only where Safari decides the page is an article. Tables and code often lose their shape, and anything Reader strips out is gone for good. And you are still selecting by hand.

Method 3: Automate it with a Shortcut (free)

Build one shortcut in the Shortcuts app and run it from the share sheet.

1. Open Shortcuts and create a new shortcut
2. Turn on Show in Share Sheet and accept URLs / Safari web pages
3. Add the action Get Contents of Web Page
4. Add the action Get Text from Rich Text
5. Add the action Copy to Clipboard
6. Name it and save

To use it: tap Share in Safari and pick your shortcut from the list.

Action names shift slightly between iOS versions. If you can't find one, search for "web page", "text", or "clipboard".

What it's good for. Free, and few taps. For most articles this is enough.

What it can't do. "Get Contents of Web Page" extracts the article the same way Reader does, so on pages where Reader doesn't work you get little or nothing. Tables lose their shape. And you still go through the share sheet.

Method 4: Use a Safari extension

Since iOS 15, Safari accepts extensions. One built for pulling out page text turns this into opening a menu and tapping a button once.

I make one of them — Copy All Text, a one-time purchase. It's mine, so weigh what follows accordingly; the numbers below are reproducible.

What it's good for. It works on pages where Reader doesn't. Text you'd have to scroll for, text clipped by a box, text shortened with an ellipsis, lists that scroll inside their own frame, what you typed into fields, and tables (tab-separated, so they paste into a spreadsheet) all come along.

What it can't do. Text inside images (there is no OCR), content embedded from another site (video players, social posts, maps), and sections that are collapsed shut. Also, iOS will not let it copy without a tap — opening it is never enough on its own.

Which to choose

Measured: how much difference does it actually make?

How much a dedicated tool gains depends heavily on how the page is built. I measured five real pages.

The comparison is between the browser's plain way of pulling text out (innerText) and the Copy All Text engine. Selecting by hand yields less than innerText, so against the real-world alternative the gap is wider than shown.

Measured 2026-08-28 in WebKit from iOS 26.5 at 390×844. Every run took between 5 and 30 milliseconds.

What this says. On ordinary pages, the amount of text you get is about the same. The gap opens on pages built with Web Components (Shadow DOM) — modern sites put pieces of the page inside a shadow root, and the plain approach drops all of it. MDN uses it in 56 places, which is where the 1.71× comes from.

Which also means: few people should pick a tool for the volume alone. For most, the real value is not dragging handles. Saying so plainly.

When a copy comes up short

Embedded frames come out empty

Video players, social posts, maps — anything embedded from another site — are off limits to the page for security reasons. No method gets them.

Collapsed sections are missing

An accordion or tab that is shut counts as not displayed. Open it first, then copy.

The bottom of the page is missing

Some pages only build their content once you scroll (infinite lists). Scroll to the end once, then copy.

Text inside an image is missing

If the text is drawn into a picture, it isn't text at all. Use iOS Live Text — press and hold on the image and select the characters.

The site blocks copying

Some sites disable selection and copying. An extension reads what the page renders, so those restrictions don't apply. What you then do with the text is governed by that site's terms and by copyright law.

In short

• Safari on iPhone has no Select All for web pages
• Free route: a Shortcut. Enough for most articles
• Pages where Reader fails, or text hidden in boxes and ellipses: an extension
• How much more you get depends on the page. Outside Shadow DOM sites, barely any difference

About Copy All Text

If your goal is feeding the page to an assistant, see how to paste a whole web page into an AI chat.