Good morning fellow developers, For a while i am struggeling with providing sound to my users on IOS (Safari on Mac is no problem and every other device is not a problem) (we have an existing phone system and made a chat as well), the case is very simple: the notification sound is only for users who are logged in and online for chat. i have tried multiple things: Audio play with javascript (start with mute, play when user clicks a button so the sound is familiar, play when user clicks a button and directly pause it and continue when needed) PWA: the dashboard has been made available as pwa and notifications using google firebase. The popup does show for notifcations to be allowed (and receiving the notifications does work on any other device) But any IOS device cannot register. The information i find is that notifications were supported with 16.4 or higher but also have been deprecated around IOS 17, auto play is not allowed. We have an app in development for our product as well were we will have a notification which will handle this, but that is not the solution we can use now. Long story, short question: is it still somehow possible to push a notification to the user when using the PWA or play a sound in the browser (based on an ajax function). The app/website wont be in the background, so it will always be on the screen. Languages we use: html/javascript (mostly vanilla)/php

I’ve been working on a personal iOS project for fun — essentially a YouTube music player, learning how background media playback works in native iOS apps. After seeing that Musi (a famous music streaming app) can play YouTube audio in the background with the screen off — I got really curious. I’ve been trying to replicate that basic background audio functionality for YouTube embeds using WKWebView. I've spent a crazy amount of time (probably 20 hours) trying to figure this out but have achieved no success. Here’s what I’ve tried so far: -Embedding a YouTube video in a WKWebView -Activating AVAudioSession with .playback and setting .setActive(true) -Adding the UIBackgroundModes key with audio in Info.plist -Adding the NSAppTransportSecurity key to allow arbitrary loads --Testing on a real device (iPhone 14, iOS 18.1 target)-- What happens: Audio plays fine in the foreground. If I exit the app and go to the lock screen quickly enough (less than 3 seconds) after pressing play, I can resume playback briefly from the lock screen — but it doesn’t automatically continue like in Musi and other apps like it. Most of the time, the audio stops when the app is backgrounded. I get this error consistently in the logs: Error acquiring assertion: <Error Domain=RBSServiceErrorDomain Code=1 "(originator doesn't have entitlement com.apple.runningboard.assertions.webkit AND originator doesn't have entitlement com.apple.multitasking.systemappassertions)" It seems like the app lacks some specific entitlements related to WebKit media playback. I don’t have AppDelegate/SceneDelegate (using SwiftUI), but can add if needed. I’m super curious how music streaming apps using youtube as a source get around this — are they doing something different under the hood? A custom player? A SafariViewController trick? Is there a specific way to configure WKWebView to keep playing in the background, or is this a known limitation? Would really appreciate any insight from folks who’ve explored this before or know how apps like Musi pulled it off. Thanks in advance!

Issue Description I'm developing a hybrid iOS app and encountering WebView bridge communication issues after updating to Xcode 16 with iOS 18 SDK. App Architecture AViewController: Initial view controller displayed at app launch Handles WebView setup and web-to-native bridge communication Pushes BViewController when receiving "B" bridge message from web BViewController: View controller stacked on top of AViewController Managed by navigation controller AViewController's WebView continues bridge communication even when BViewController is active Problem Behavior Xcode 15 (iOS 18): WebView bridge communication in AViewController works normally while BViewController is active Xcode 16 (iOS 18 SDK): Server communication breaks or hangs without response while BViewController is active Communication resumes only after popping back to AViewController from BViewController Questions Is the current architecture (configuring WebView in AViewController and maintaining bridge communication through AViewController's WebView while BViewController is presented) not a recommended pattern? Is Xcode 16's iOS 18 SDK the cause of this issue? If so, could you help me understand which specific changes are affecting this behavior? This is urgent as we need to deploy soon. I would greatly appreciate a prompt response.

Hi, I would like to share a finding and ask for a solution, if possible. This may be a potential bug with PointerMoveEvent on Safari on an iPad with Pencil Pro. I tested onPointerMove and onTouchMove in a <canvas> element in a React web app for freehand drawing using Mouse on a PC. Finger touch on iPad Apple pencil pro on iPad Finger touch on iPhone I was able to draw smooth curves in all cases except when using onPointerMove with Apple pencil pro on iPad. The curve drawn in this case looked like it was created using several straight-line segments. It seems like the sampling rate for PointerMoveEvent is lower than that of TouchMoveEvent on Safari I am not sure how to solve this problem or if it is an issue with Safari's interpretation of PointerEvents. Any input is greatly appreciated. Edit: It seems like https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/689375 is related.

We have noticed that in iOS 16 or greater , the Smart App Banner which shows based on meta tag added is not showing the app ratings inside the popup. Can we override this new behavior to show ratings and custom text.

Hi all, I'm developing an application that uses WKWebView to display a web application which I augment with iOS native utilities such as Speech to Text and IAP. The application also uses Service workers, so we define AppBound Domains in the info.plist file. Everything works for this, but when we deploy on a device the application will crash and say we need these entitlements com.apple.developer.web-browser-engine.networking, com.apple.developer.web-browser-engine.rendering, com.apple.developer.web-browser-engine.webcontent, com.apple.runningboard.assertions.webkit From what I can see, we do need all of them. However Apple suggest submitting a request to be an Altnerative Browser (https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines) This is not appropriate for the application in my view since one requirement of being an alternative browser is that you don't modify the resources on the web site - we of course do since we inject javascript in order to bridge between iOS and the contents of the webview. How are people navigating this issue? I assumed it would be common given the use of Tauri etc. to build similar types of applications, but I don't see much about it. Thank you!

We are encountering a download issue in Safari 18.2 on macOS Sequoia 15.2 where file downloads initiated by our AngularJS application (such as Excel exports) are silently blocked. There are no errors in the browser console, and the download does not occur. Interestingly, after testing on Safari 18.3 with Sequoia 15.3, the downloads worked as expected. However, the problem reappeared on Safari 18.4 with Sequoia 15.4. We suspect that recent changes in Safari’s security or download handling may be preventing downloads triggered via asynchronous JavaScript (e.g., AJAX calls) that are not initiated directly by user interaction. We would appreciate any insights, suggestions, or possible workarounds from the community. Looking forward to your guidance on this matter.

Hi! My SwiftUI app is a rather complex browser app. Starting with iOS 18, the app crashes due to repeted reloads of the WkWebView. I’ve tracked the issue as far as I can, but I still haven’t found the root cause. My app is structured like this: MainView holds a cuple of subviews. It also holds a @StateObject called viewModel that holds a lot of @Published vars. The viewModel is passed as a enivormentObject. Example from ViewModel: @MainActor class ViewModel: NSObject, ObservableObject { @Published public var isLoading: Bool = false @Published public var loadProgress: Double? = 0 public func setIsLoading(_ value: Bool) async { self.isLoading = value } public func setLoadProgress(_ value: Double?) async { self.loadProgress = value } } WebView is a subview of MainView, which holds a navigation bar, and a UIViewRepresentable, which is a WkWebView. The WkWebView pushes some states to the ViewModel as the underlying values of the WkWebView changes, i.e. estimaedProgress, and isLoading. This is done via KVO and works like this: estimatedProgressObservation = self.parent.webView.observe(\.estimatedProgress) { webView, progress in Task { await parent.viewModel.setLoadProgress(webView.estimatedProgress) } } isLoadingObservation = self.parent.webView.observe(\.isLoading) { webView, value in Task { await parent.viewModel.setIsLoading(webView.isLoading) } } By using a timer in WkWebViews Coordinator, i trigger a load after a configurable amount of time :
 func loadUrl(url: URL) { DispatchQueue.main.async { console.info("Load URL: ...", sensitive: "Load URL: \(url.absoluteString)") let policy: NSURLRequest.CachePolicy if self.parent.settings.noCache { policy = .reloadIgnoringLocalAndRemoteCacheData } else { policy = .useProtocolCachePolicy } let request = URLRequest(url: url, cachePolicy: policy) self.parent.webView.load(request) } } Running the app with the automatic reload enabled freezes the app after a couple of hours. It also seems to freeze Safari on the device. The device needs to be rebooted. If I inspect the device's running processes, hundreds of ”com.apple.webkit. web content " processes are running. Removing await parent.viewModel.setLoadProgress(webView.estimatedProgress) and await parent.viewModel.setIsLoading(webView.isLoading) fixes the issue, but it is necessary for other app functions. Therefore, is suspect that the viewModel somehow causes the bug. The issue arises after a couple of loads 5-10. The debugger shows a message when the processes start to pile up. I suspect its related. Failed to terminate process: Error Domain=com.apple.extensionKit.errorDomain Code=18 "(null)" UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x12d0e7f60 {Error Domain=RBSServiceErrorDomain Code=1 "Client not entitled" UserInfo={RBSEntitlement=com.apple.runningboard.terminateprocess, NSLocalizedFailureReason=Client not entitled, RBSPermanent=true}}} How can I find out what causes the suspected memory leak? Instruments gives me nothing of value. The memory leak wasn't present in iOS 17. Is this a bug in iOS 18, or was something intentionally changed?

I want to confirm the specifications and behavior of Safari. We have a system built on Microsoft Azure that uses Azure AD B2C for authentication. When we logging in, there is a phone authentication feature where a call is made to the registered phone number. However, this phone authentication does not work properly only on iPhone's Safari. The specific situation is listed below: When performing phone authentication on iPhone's Safari, a call is made from Azure AD B2C, and pressing the # button on the Safari screen can be done. But then, it transitions to an error screen. We tried multiple iPhone devices and multiple iOS versions, but the result was the same. But when accessing the system on a PC, and performing phone authentication, it works without any errors. Also when we use browsers other than Safari (for example, Google Chrome and Firefox) on the iPhone, the phone authentication works without any errors, too. Even with Safari, if the device displaying the login screen and the device making the call are different, phone authentication works without any errors, too.(it fails if they are the same device). We reached out Microsoft about this issue, and they responded that: The Azure resource called FrontDoor at the front end of Azure AD B2C supports the HTTP/2 protocol, and HTTP/2 protocol is used in communication with Safari. In Safari's HTTP/2 communication, when a call is received while the screen is displayed, a reset packet is sent to the web server (in this case, the web server is FrontDoor). This interrupts the session, causing a session termination error on the Azure AD B2C side, and phone authentication fails. Therefore, we would like to ask you the following two points: In HTTP/2 communication, does the Safari browser send a reset packet to the web server when it receives a phone call? If so, what is the cause of this behavior? And are there any measures to prevent the reset packet from being sent?

I have a web extension that I want to send data to, and receive a response containing modified data. My understanding is that the native app is only contactable by a background script. How does a webpage contact the background script? One answer is by adding a content script, which is able to communicate with the background script using browser.native.sendMessage(). Unfortunately this triggers a warning that "this extension can read and alter web pages". I do not want to read and alter web pages, nor do I want users to be concerned about a permission the app doesn't need. I just want to receive data, and then return a response. What API should I be using to achieve this?

Actually this is a duplicate for https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/106537 but in web-specific forums section. Is there any video/audio codec best practices, guides, recommendations for app/web developers for best performance (take advantage from HW acceleration), power consumption saving? What are officially supported media containers? What are video encoding profiles, video dimensions, frame rates? The only official source I have found is https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/delivering-video-content-for-safari?language=objc. But h264 is pretty old. I experimentally found that the VP9 video format is also supported on iOS newer versions. But is this a requirement? Сan i be sure that the video will play on all devices? My goal is to provide web media content (which will be rendered in my application using WKWebView API) that will be supported by most devices (both iOS and MacOS), takes advantage of such features as hardware decode acceleration and be efficient. Any hints/info is highly appreciated. Best regards.

Hi Team, I'm using the simple mailto functionality in the demo page and when I tested the same via Safari mailto functionality is not working. However, the same feature is working as expected via Chrome. Demo: https://jsfiddle.net/xut0ed4y/ Kindly help.me to resolve this issue.

Dear Apple Developer Support Team, I am writing regarding critical issues we are facing with Safari web push notifications in our application iLiveMyLife.io, which is severely impacting our ability to maintain reliable communication with our users. Issue Description: We are experiencing persistent problems with Safari push notification tokens expiring or becoming invalid without any notification to our server. This creates several critical issues: Users stop receiving notifications without any indication of failure Our notification delivery system has no way to detect token expiration The expiration appears to happen frequently (seemingly almost daily in some cases) There is no reliable mechanism to re-establish push communication without users manually revisiting the app Technical Impact: Our messaging functionality becomes completely unreliable We must resort to email or SMS as fallback mechanisms, which is not feasible for a real-time communication platform This makes building any reliable messaging application on Safari practically impossible The Broader Context: What makes this situation particularly challenging is that all potential alternative browser APIs that could help address this issue appear to be deliberately disabled or restricted in Safari: Background Service Workers don't function in the background on iOS Safari Background Sync API is not supported WebSockets cannot operate when the app is closed There's no way to programmatically check the validity of push tokens The combination of these limitations creates a situation where developers have no viable technical path to build reliable notification systems for PWAs on Safari. This appears to be a systematic restriction rather than individual API limitations. Requested Information: Is there a recommended approach to detect Safari push token expiration? Are there alternative notification mechanisms for PWA applications on Safari that offer more reliability? Is there documentation on the lifecycle of Safari push tokens that could help us implement proper handling? Are there plans to improve the Web Push API implementation in Safari to address these reliability issues? Could you clarify if these limitations are intentional design decisions or technical constraints that might be addressed in future updates? Business Impact: This issue fundamentally undermines our platform's core functionality. For a collaborative tool, reliable notifications are essential - users cannot collaborate effectively if they miss updates because their push tokens silently expired. The current state creates confusion among our users, who don't understand why they suddenly stop receiving notifications. Any guidance or assistance you could provide would be greatly appreciated. We're committed to providing an excellent experience on Safari, but the current push notification limitations make this extremely challenging. Thank you for your time and consideration. Best regards, Ilya

I've been using Sign In with Apple for Web for the last six months, and it works well enough. Now, I'm updating the domain of the main application (we got the .com! yeah!) However, I can't find a way in the configuration UI to update the allowed redirect URLs for the application. I go to Identifiers -> My App -> Capabilities -> Sign In with Apple -> Edit button. It just allows me to edit whether this is a primary ID, or grouped ID, plus a callback URL (which I'm not currently using.)

How to allocate the width of each column when customizing the rendering of HTML tables on iOS with limited screen width

So I have web Augmented Reality apps hosted on AWS S3. It worked fine for a month, but as soon as the IOS 18.4 update was installed they stopped working. It works on every other device and IOS versions. The URLs for the mentioned AR experiences: digitechonline.in/solsprefimaginewt8/ digitechonline.in/solsprefimaginewt8p2/ digitechonline.in/orocarear/ These AR experiences get stuck on the loading screen and either reload or give an error. Ideally the camera is supposed to open. I have tested it on Safari, Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome browsers. They were created through Unity webgl and hosted on AWS S3 bucket. Please provide a quick solution to this.

Hi, when I display an HTML page with a on Safari iOS, I get a nice UI. Great! At the first look I see a video frame with an arrow-in-a-circle button in the middle. Very nice. I click on the arrow and I get a fullscreen view while the video begins to play. I watch the video then I pause it then I click on the top-left x button. So I go back to my html page and the video is perfectly there as it was before. But, there is an annoying new detail. The video frame is really dark, it still presents all the controls and a "different" arrow button to play it again. In other words that nice video-frame, that nice picture, is not longer visible on the page. That nice page with nice pictures has now an almost-black rectangle. Too bad. Sure I can click on the video (outside the controls) then the controls and the black overlaying frame disappear. I can see that nice picture again. Finally. Well, but the arrow-in-a-circle button to play the video disappeared. Now the user cannot longer understand that's a video to play. It looks just like any other pictures to admire statically. Is any way to get the previous first look of the video? The one clear, with the current frame and the arrow-in-a-circle look?

Hello, I am developing a website which starts a web worker using the js code: const zarrWorker = new Worker('./zarr_file.js', { type: 'module' });. The script 'zarr_file.js' is served from the same origin with Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: require-corp and Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin and it is importing external modules through the import statement (e.g. import * as zarr from "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/zarrita/+esm";). All the external modules are blocked by Safari with the error Worker load was blocked by Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy, although I can see (by running curl on them) that they correctly set cross-origin-resource-policy: cross-origin`. The same website works fine in Chrome and Firefox. Is it a bug or is Safari implementing stricter policies? In the latter case what would be the solution?

Is there any supported mechanism in Safari Web Extensions (MV3) for capturing or logging network request data (like fetch, XHR, or webRequest) triggered by the web page?

I am calling fetch with a POST on page1 in Safari. No special cache parameters on the fetch call. The response from the server is a 303 redirect to page2 The second page -- page2 -- is in my browser's cache with cache-control "public, max-age=31536000, immutable". For some reason, the page2 redirect is causing a server hit to re-GET the second page every time instead of pulling from cache. If I instead directly get the second page by doing a fetch on page2, there is no server hit. If I do this on Chrome or Firefox, it behaves as I would expect, pulling page2 from the cache with no server hit. In case it matters, the fetch is coming from within an iFrame. Also, if I change the original POST to a GET, the problem still happens. I am using a pretty old version of Safari on my Mac, so I could chalk it up to that, but I am getting the same behavior with Safari on my iPhone with iOS 18.3.2 Any ideas? Thanks.