The user interface is just something that needs to be there to be able to use the browser, but it must not get in the way.Įven Apple thinks that the user interface should get out of your way as quickly as possible whenever possible. The most important thing about a browser is the rendering engine. While this sounds great, it also reduces browsers to little more than different user interfaces on top of the same thing. They care less about making a great browser on iOS but more about letting their existing users tap into their current ecosystem on iOS.Īre you using Edge on Windows? No problem, you can download Edge on iOS, and all your passwords, bookmarks, and tabs are there. For example, bookmark sharing with the desktop version of your browser.Īnd that is precisely why other browser manufacturers are willing to bother with this mess in the first place. All you need to do is provide a friendly user interface and maybe integrate with your ecosystem. Your app does not need to worry about that at all. WebKit handles all the actual loading, parsing and rendering. You provide the framework with a configuration object and need to handle some events it sends your way. Apple provides an WebView that allows apps to embed WebKit in your app with relatively little effort.

Meme created by The great equaliser: the system WebViewīut how can you use that one authorised version of WebKit? There is a framework for that. Even though WebKit is open-source, you can’t modify or improve that version and use that in your app. In fact, it must use the system-provided WebKit framework.

The reality is that apps in the App Store need to be reviewed and approved by Apple, and according to the App Store Review Guidelines:Ģ.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.Īnd that is final. It might require some effort porting the rendering engine to iOS, but I know that some browsers would like to put in that work, but sadly they are not allowed to. It’s not that these rendering engines can’t run on iOS. Or look at Firefox, which uses the Gecko rendering engine on all platforms. On Android, Windows and even macOS, they are using the Chromium rendering engine. On other platforms, this is not the case. You may not realise that all browsers on iOS are required to use the same rendering engine as Safari.

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