Apple is finally allowing full versions of Chrome and Firefox to run on the iPhone

Catweazle

In iOS 17.4, Apple is opening up its system to other browser engines, which means browsers will get better fast. But only users in the EU get to try them.

With iOS 17.4, Apple is making a number of huge changes to the way its mobile operating system works in order to comply with new regulations in the EU. One of them is an important product shift: for the first time, Apple is going to allow alternative browser engines to run on iOS — but only for users in the EU.

Since the beginning of the App Store, Apple has allowed lots of browsers but only one browser engine: WebKit. WebKit is the technology that underpins Safari, but it’s far from the only engine on the market. Google’s Chrome is powered by an engine called Chromium, which is the dominant engine by a wide margin — Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera, and many other browsers also run on Chromium. Mozilla’s Firefox runs on its own engine, called Gecko.

On iOS, though, all those browsers have been forced to run on WebKit instead, which means many features and extensions simply don’t work anymore. That changes with iOS 17.4 — anyone building a browser, or building an in-app browser for their app, can use a non-WebKit engine if they wish. Each developer will have to be authorized by Apple to switch engines “after meeting specific criteria and committing to a number of ongoing privacy and security mitigations,” Apple said in a release announcing the change, at which point they’ll get access to features like Passkeys and multiprocessing. Apple’s also adding a new choice screen to Safari so that when you first open the browser, you’ll be able to choose a different default if you want.

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(I almost didn't dare post it, thinking about the years of insomnia of our Devs to put Vivaldi to work on this thing)