Do Safari private tabs stay open after iPhone shutdown?

Does Private Browsing in Safari keep private tabs open when you restart your iPhone 6, or do they get closed automatically?

If private tabs remain open, when opening Safari will you see the normal tabs or the private tabs?

Solution 1:

I just checked this on my iPhone 6 running iOS 10.3.3. I opened a private browsing tab and went to a site then powered my iPhone off.

When it restarted I opened Safari again. My private browsing tab opened up to the exact site I was on when I powered off.

So I think you're busted on this one. But you've learned a valuable lesson about private browsing and always having a passcode on your device :-).

Solution 2:

Safari always reopens in whatever state you left it in. This is true even if you force-quit it through the app switcher or reboot your device.

So if you had it open in Private browsing mode, then it will reopen in Private browsing mode, showing you the last Private tab you had open (or the birds-eye view if that’s how you left it).

Unfortunately, Private tabs do not sync (and therefore are not visible) via iCloud, so you cannot close them remotely either.

If this is really important to you, you can still put your iPhone into Lost Mode by logging in to iCloud.com, which will allow you to lock it with a password.