On iPhone 16 running iOS 18.0(Xcode 16.2), cookies configured with SameSite=None; Secure fail to apply correctly—iOS forcibly converts the attribute to SameSite=Lax. As a result, cross-site requests from H5 pages within our app cannot carry the required cookies, causing failures.
Can anyone help me on this?
Thanks in advance.
Safari
RSS for tagSafari is the web browser developed by Apple and built into all Apple devices.
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Hi Apple Devs & WebKit Team,
We operate https://outdoorgala.com — a verified, HTTPS-secure Canadian ecommerce site focused on elite outdoor safety gear. We're Indigenous-owned, based in Alberta, and take customer trust and compliance seriously.
However, Safari (iOS + macOS) is falsely flagging our site as “deceptive,” preventing customers from accessing us — even though:
We use GoDaddy Website Builder with no redirections or malware
All product links are clean, HTTPS-secure, and tracked ethically
We recently implemented a fully compliant cookie banner (Accept/Decline logic)
A public security.txt and OpenPGP key has been published: https://outdoorgala.com/security
No phishing, malware, or cloaking behavior exists on the site
We’ve already submitted a review via:
➡️ https://websitereview.apple.com
And filed a bug report via Feedback Assistant (FB17608544)
What else can be done to speed up review or get flagged domains unblocked in Safari? This is hurting our business and blocking consumer access — despite following all Apple guidelines.
Would appreciate any insights or escalation tips.
Thank you!
– Derek Eiteneier
Founder, Outdoor Gala
We have an existing Safari App Extension distributed outside the App Store (self-distributed). Recently, we converted another browser extension to a Safari Web Extension and used the same bundle ID as the original application to avoid any change on the CX side.
After distributing this updated app, we noticed that the Safari extension was disabled on users' machines, and users are now required to manually re-enable it in Safari's preferences.
Is this the expected behavior and is there way to avoid this for future updates ?
Starting in iOS 18.4, (and still in the iOS 18.5 beta), the AVPlayer seems to freeze when we:
Replace the current AVPlayerItem, ReplaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem and then:
Call Seek very shortly afterwards (seekToTime:toleranceBefore:toleranceAfter: / seek(to:))
And then subsequent calls to play after have no effect. However, it feels scrubbing to see after works and also changing the playback rate (i.e. fast forward) tends to clear up the frozen state.
Our primary workflow involves video playback, replacing video to show new clips and in some cases seeking to specific frames. This appears to only be occurring while streaming video, reports are all that local downloaded video playback remains fine.
This same code path has worked without issue on 17.x and 18.3.2 and for years before that.
What is particularly strange is that time observers log that video is still playing or feeding frames. The reported status is ReadyToPlay, IsLikelyToKeepUp is true, and there are no indications of stalling or buffering.
A similar issue is true for our web application in Safari. While on Sonoma and Safari 17.x, there is no issue. When you update to macOS Sequoia 15.4.1 and Safari 18.4, you begin observing a similar freezing. The same does not occur on Chrome or other tested browsers.
There appears to be in the release notes for Safari 18.4, an interesting "fix" note that seems similar to what we are now experiencing:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-release-notes/safari-18_4-release-notes
"Fixed an issue where playback doesn’t always resume after a seek. (140097993)"
"Fixed playing video generating non-monotonic ‘timeupdate’ events. (142275184) (FB16222910)"
"Fixed websites calling play() during a seek() is allowed by the specification so that the play event is fired even if the seek hasn’t completed. (142517488)"
"Fixed seek not completing for WebM under some circumstances. (143372794)"
"Fixed MediaRecorderPrivateEncoder writing frames out of order. (143956063)"
I want to migrate from a Safari App Extension to a Safari Web Extension, but don't know how to get rid of the message, telling users that my extension can access their passwords. Here is a message which I see:
I was thinking that this might be because all Safari Web Extension get this type of access, but I have a Safari Web Extension which does not require such level of access:
Here is the manifest:
{
"manifest_version": 2,
"default_locale": "en",
"name": "__MSG_extension_name__",
"description": "__MSG_extension_description__",
"version": "1.1",
"icons": {
"48": "images/icon-48.png"
},
"background": {
"scripts": [
"background.js"
],
"persistent": true
},
"browser_action": {
"default_popup": "popup.html",
"default_icon": {
"16": "images/toolbar-icon-16.png"
}
},
"permissions": [
"nativeMessaging", "tabs"
]
}
and here is the Info.plist file:
Here is the entire code of the extension:
https://github.com/kopyl/web-extension-simplified
updateDynamic rules is blocking ads on my device with iOS 17.4, but on my iOS 18 device the same code is not blocking ads.
Is this a known issue?
Hello,
According to the documentation:
If you provide your extension in macOS and don’t want to use the Mac App Store for distribution, you can sign and notarize your extension’s app with a Developer ID to distribute it outside the Mac App Store.
However, I found this to be untrue in practice. Even after signing and notarising the Safari extension correctly, it is not possible to enable it in Safari without turning on "allow unsigned extension".
This makes it impossible to distribute your Developer ID–signed and notarized extension outside the Mac App Store.
I would like to distribute my web extension directly to employees in my organization using MDM without having each user manually enable "allow unsigned extension" for it to work. Any way to make it work?
The documentation is quite confusing in this aspect, it says "Safari only supports signed extensions" but my extension is rejected even if notarised and signed.
Hi Everyone,
I’m currently working on a flow where a web page redirects to our app to perform certain actions, and then returns the user back to the browser. However, on iOS, the only way to go back to the browser is by using the openURL method. The issue is that this method can only open the browser app itself—it can’t control which tab or page is shown, so the user doesn’t return to the original tab they came from. The same limitation also applies to Android.
Furthermore, iOS doesn’t allow an app to programmatically return to the previous app (in this case, the browser). While Android doesn’t have an official way either, in some cases, the OS automatically returns to the previous app when ours is closed.
I’d like to ask:
Is there any known method or workaround that allows returning from my app back to Safari (or the default browser) and restoring the previously active web page or tab?
Or, is there any way to programmatically return to the previous app from within my app?
Thanks in advance for your support!
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!
Safari Extension Error: “Non-persistent background content cannot listen to webRequest events.” after macOS 15.4 / Safari 18.4 Update
We’re seeing the following error in the Safari Extensions tab after updating to macOS 15.4 and Safari 18.4:
“Non-persistent background content cannot listen to webRequest events.”
This error did not appear prior to the update, and we haven’t found any official documentation stating that webRequest API is no longer supported in Safari.
In our extension (Manifest V3), we are using the webRequest.onHeadersReceived callback to intercept response headers and read updated cookies.
While the functionality itself still works as expected. we’re able to access the response headers and this error is now shown in the Extension settings page.
We are not seeing this issue in other browsers (Chrome, Firefox) using the same Manifest V3 setup.
Is there any plan to deprecate webRequest support in Manifest V3 for Safari?
We’d appreciate any clarification or guidance on how to handle this going forward.
I have a very specific issue that happens only on iOS Simulator version 18.4.
It does NOT happen when I run my app on a real iOS 18.4 device through Testflight.
My app displays a WebView (courtesy of Capacitor, url scheme capacitor://).
Inside that Webview I'm using Firebase JS API (11.2.0) and calling signInWithEmailAndPassword, which works well in all other contexts, i.e. browser, Android webview, iOS webview in all other Simulator versions, and on real devices.
Only when running in Simulator 18.4, I get a failed network request:
cannot parse response
Fetch API cannot load https://identitytoolkit.googleapis.com/v1/accounts:signInWithPassword?... due to access control checks.
Failed to load resource: cannot parse reponse
error: FirebaseError: (auth/network-request-failed)
Everything is working correctly for both:
Capacitor app webview installed on a real 18.4 device with Testflight
Safari (non-webview) in the 18.4 Simulator
The issue is severe for us, because we are unable to develop our app and test it in the simulator on 18.4 Simulator before pushing it through Testflight internal release.
Request headers on the failed request (no response status or headers available).
Request
Accept: /
Content-Type: application/json
Origin: capacitor://localhost
Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty
Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
Sec-Fetch-Site: cross-site
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_4 like Mac OS X) - AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/15E148
X-Client-Version: Mobile/JsCore/11.2.0/FirebaseCore-web
X-Firebase-Client: (...)
We’re encountering an issue when trying to add non-standard headers to outgoing requests using Declarative Net Request (DNR) rules in our Safari Web Extension.
Tested on macOS 15.4 with Safari 18.4.
Specifically, when attempting to add a custom header such as "X-Custom-Header" using a DNR rule, the header does not appear in the request. We are able to add standard headers like "Authorization" and "Cookie" to the request successfully using the same method.
This behavior suggests that Safari may be filtering or blocking non-standard headers when set via DNR rules, unlike other browsers.
In Chrome and Firefox, the same rule adds the "X-Custom-Header" header without any issue.
We are looking for assistance in fixing these issues and having our Safari Extension function the same as it does in Firefox and Chrome.
We’re seeing an issue in our Safari Web Extension where not all cookies from the Set-Cookie response header are accessible. We are using macOS 15.4 and Safari 18.4.
In the webRequest.onHeadersReceived callback, the Set-Cookie header returned by Safari only includes some of the cookies set by the server. If multiple Set-Cookie headers are present, we seem to receive only a partial list, some cookies are missing entirely.
In Chrome and Firefox, the same callback provides all cookies set by the server without issue.
We are looking for assistance in fixing these issues and having our Safari Extension function the same as it does in Firefox and Chrome.
When a DNR rule is set for a specific URL and the request receives a server-side redirect (e.g., 302) to a different URL that does not match the urlFilter, the rule still seems to apply to the redirected request. We are using macOS 15.4 and Safari 18.4.
For example, consider two sequential calls: call1 and call2.
call1 triggers a 302 redirect to call2.
A DNR rule is created to add a "Cookie" header to call1 based on its URL.
Unexpectedly, the same cookie is also added to call2, even though call2's URL does not match the rule's urlFilter.
This results in the Set-Cookie response from call1 being ignored, and call2 receiving the manually set cookie instead—leading to incorrect behavior.
This issue doesn't occur in Chrome or Firefox, where the rule is not applied to the redirected request if the URL no longer matches.
We are looking for assistance in fixing these issues and having our Safari Extension function the same as it does in Firefox and Chrome.
In our web application some functionalities will allow user to upload multiple images (More than 25 images) in a single page
It is working find in all OS and browsers except iOS
When user try to upload images directly from camera there will be some overlaps, duplication, missing etc.
This is happening in both Safari and Chrome, we had a thorough check in our application and found every thing is working fine from our end
You can reproduce the issue by creating a web page which accept more than 50 images (we tried the same in ASP MVC Core & PHP) and showing the images in order
access the page through your iPhone using Safari or Chrome
Try to upload images directly from your camera, try sequential images (Image of a stop watch, or some thing like that) so that you can easily identify the order of files uploaded
and check the listing page of uploaded image (Try these steps multiple times)
You can find some images are duplicated and some are missing
Safari Version 14.0.1 (16610.2.11.51.8)
I am porting a Chrome/Firefox/Edge extension to Safari Web Extension. Mostly, the process was painless, I am, however, seeing quite different behavior in the tab ids generated by Safari compared to Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. My extension has callbacks for each of these browser.webNavigation events:
browser.webNavigation.onBeforeNavigate
browser.webNavigation.onCommitted
browser.webNavigation.onDOMContentLoaded
In each of these I rely on the tab id for various future tab targeting operations. When opening a new tab, the details object passed to each of these callbacks has a non-zero tabId on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. However, in Safari, the tabId is always zero. To debug, I added one more callback:
browser.webNavigation.onCompleted
At this point Safari finally has a non-zero tabId in the details param. Needless to say this is causing some consternation with achieving the same outcomes as tab tracking on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. It's like Safari is treating new tabs as "non tabs" until navigation completes. You can even see it when trying to get the tab by tabId=0:
browser.tabs.get(tabId) // tabId=0 here
	.then(tab => {
		// tab is undefined
	});
Seems like this might be a bug. I can't imagine why the behavior is so different from other browsers. Any ideas on how to work around?
Hello,
I'm not able to get the webauthn attestation statement using the option (attestation.direct) on Safari. The answer I get is a fmt of none and a aaguid of zeros.
The same code works on Chrome and I was able to get a none zero aaguid and a packed fmt attestation.
Can you explain why this does not work on Safari ?
Thank you.
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?
I am trying to build and run a Safari Web Extension from Xcode and I have enabled "Allow unsigned extensions" in Safari settings. However, I see the below pop up:
And, if click on the "Quit and Open Safari Extensions Preferences..." button, the project stops running on Xcode and nothing happens.
What can be the issue? The extension works and runs fine if I get it from the Mac App Store and this only happens when running from Xcode. I even tried completely uninstalling the mac app store version and still facing the same issue.
Problem
As the title says, Safari lost all my tabs once I updated to macOS 15.4. I do of course have "Safari opens with: All windows from last session" set. This has been my default for many years.
Past Mitigation
In the past I had a script that I could use to backup ~/Library/Safari that would save all my bookmarks and tabs. Unfortunately they made this method of backup non-function sometime around when tab groups were introduced.
Suggestion
Fortunately my tab groups are still intact. But this sort of problem doesn't give me a lot of confidence. I haven't had something like this happen in a while, but when it does happen, it's quite frustrating. Apple really needs to recognize that this sort of thing can and will happen and they should make it easier for users to manually save/restore their tabs.
Problem with forums
To add insult to injury, as I was typing this message in the forum, I decided to select "Edit Bookmarks"... which proceeded to replace the current window with my bookmarks, thereby losing my post! It did this without warning of page content changes (which I get from most other websites).
I felt somewhat relieved that the forum had recognized a previous draft and offered for me to continue. However, when I selected it, it brought me back to an old post... that was actually posted!
smh