While third-party browsers have always existed on iPhones, Apple only allowed those third-party browsers to use Safari’s rendering engine. Apple lifted this restriction for some regions earlier this year, however, and work is underway to make Chromium work on iOS. Now, we finally have a peek at how it’s going.
Igalia, one of the main contributors to the Blink web engine, has showed off some of the work that has been done to port real Chromium (and thus, the Chrome browser) to iPhone and iPad devices with Apple’s new APIs. The first half of 2024 saw several key advancements, including raising the minimum iOS SDK version, implementing new ContentWebState methods, adopting BrowserEngineKit APIs, and reducing the package size. However, many features like printing, downloads, and text selection are still missing or not fully functional. Additionally, a substantial number of tests remain to be addressed.
The progress seems to be going well, and it shows that actual Chrome for iOS will be with us in the short-to-medium term. Igalia says that it has been instrumental in the bringup process, contributing UI elements like file and color choosers, enhancing multimedia capabilities, and improving testing frameworks. It has also enabled remote debugging and worked on graphics-related optimizations. Still, it’s a gigantic task that requires a lot of effort by all open-source contributors involved. We wouldn’t expect to see an initial version of the browser until 2025, once most stuff has been properly implemented and deal-breaking issues are ironed out. It’s not every day that we see Chromium land on a brand-new platform, after all.
Apple still only allows third-party rendering engines on iPhones and iPads in the European Union, as a result of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The company doesn’t seem interested in bringing that functionality to other countries. That means Chrome in the United States and other countries will probably still use the Safari engine for a while.
Source: Igalia
