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
Explore the integration of web technologies within your app. Discuss building web-based apps, leveraging Safari functionalities, and integrating with web services.
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I tried to create a content blocker for Safari and did it through Safari App Extension and Safari Web Extension.
The XCode project for Safari Extension creates 2 applications: the “Main Application” (which is compiled into ".app") and the “Safari Extension” itself (which is compiled into ".appex").
If you want to create a content blocker, you must add “Content Blocker Extension” from the “File → New → Target” menu. This will be the third application in the group, which is also compiled into "*.appex".
And now about differences...
The first difference is that Web Extension does not have the right to work on any domains by default, unlike App Extension. For the App Extension, in the "info.plist" in the "SFSafariWebsiteAccess" section, we can remove "Allowed Domains" and in "Level" replace "Some" to "All". This is important because the content blocker should work on any domain, and not be turned on manually for each individual. This will not work in Web Extension and will have to be activated for each domain separately.
The second significant difference between Web Extension and App Extension is that for security reasons it is more limited in page management.
Web Extensions are supposedly focused on a common API for all browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Edge, Safari), but if I use Safari and want maximum integration with it, then I don't care about all those browsers. In this case, I don't need Web Extension.
App Extension functions as a client-server even within the “Main Application”. This is quite expensive and can be fixed. You can remove the “webView” component from storyBoard and remove this files: “script.js”, “main.html”, “style.css”. After this you will get the pure storyBoard without any tinsel and communication between these layers. That’s will work perfectly because these are native Swift applications.
p.s. To show the "Safari Extension" window after clicking on the icon on the toolbar, you need to change key from "Command" to "Popover" in the "info.plist" in the section "SFSafariToolbarItem" in the "Action".
write your additions...
Topic:
Safari & Web
SubTopic:
General
Hi i Need help, my phone keeps getting all these updates and rapid security features on it at first I thought it was just the normal updates but i started to pay more attention and it's not. i have the beta updates on my phone iPad and Apple Watch but when I go in to see if it in my updates like apple said to do it wasn't in there. Also all my apps are developer apps I'm not able to get normal ones and if I can the next time I go on it it's not how it was. I really don't know what to do, I've gotten 2 new phones because I thought it was just bad software but I researched a lot and I think someone it hacking me. everytime I look something up on safari it takes me to a whole other website or its completly altered and doesnt look like it usually does. Someone please help me lmao I actually think I'm going to lose my mind.
Topic:
Safari & Web
SubTopic:
General
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?
Topic:
Safari & Web
SubTopic:
General
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!
We are experiencing a problem that seems to be caused by a specification changes for Safari.
We would like to discuss how to solve this problem.
Sample JavaScript:
<html>
<head>
<script>
function jumpPage(code) {
document.main.code.value = code;
win1=window.open("","win1","toolbar=no,resizable=yes,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,left=0,top=0");
win1.resizeTo(width=screen.availWidth,height=screen.availHeight);
document.main.action="details";
document.main.target="win1";
document.main.submit();
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form name="main" method="post" action="" target="">
<a href="javascript:jumpPage('001')">details</a>
<input type="hidden" name="code" value="">
</body>
</html>
This JavaScript performs the following actions when a link is clicked.
Open a window using window.open in JavaScript
Submit the above opened window by post method to the target in JavaScript.
When this operation is performed, the process in (2) could submit to the
target page with “POST” method before iOS18.1, but
will transition to the page with“GET”method from iOS18.2 onward.
All protocols are http.
This problem does not occur if the URL is specified as an IP address, but it does occur if the host name is specified as.
Please let me know how to use with“POST”method as in iOS 18.2 or earlier.
Best regards,
Topic:
Safari & Web
SubTopic:
General
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.
When we embed some of the youtube videos are unable to load in the Mobile app but at the same time it works in Website. I need to allow it in both places.
I have tried both embed and native sdk for youtube in iOS.
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.
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
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're embedding the Power BI reports into our portal by using JS library. While testing them, we found that mobile layout of the reports don't work as we expect on iOS devices (tested in Chrome and Safari). There are two principals issues: 1) the site is automatically refreshed when the users filter the data (we reduced them to lower expression) and 2) the site also crashes after a while using the dashboard by applying different filters.
I have multiple web views of the same domain that share the same local storage, as expected.
One of them though, is loading a .webarchive file.
The web archive is of the same domain, and is loaded using the same base URL.
For some reason, in most cases, the local storage is not shared with this web view when loading the web archive, although if I make that same web view load the actual live web page it does share local storage.
I say in most cases, because for some users it works as expected, but for a significant portion of users it isn't sharing local storage.
I think that the main difference between working and not is iOS version. iOS 17 seems to be able to share the local storage but iOS 18 does not. I can't find anything related in the release notes of iOS 18 versions.
There is nothing in the documentation for load(_:mimeType:characterEncodingName:baseURL:), or the header file, that explains anything specific about local storage and webarchive loading.
Does anyone know for sure how local storage is handled when a webarchive is loaded into a web view, and did something change with iOS 18 in regards to 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.
My app sends users notifications of important messages in the app. How can I make sure the user receives them?
How to allocate the width of each column when customizing the rendering of HTML tables on iOS with limited screen width
Topic:
Safari & Web
SubTopic:
General
0x158c2ce18 - [pageProxyID=33, webPageID=34, PID=883] WebPageProxy::didFailProvisionalLoadForFrame: frameID=4294967298, isMainFrame=1, domain=NSURLErrorDomain, code=-999, isMainFrame=1, willInternallyHandleFailure=0
Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-999 "已取消" UserInfo={_NSURLErrorFailingURLSessionTaskErrorKey=LocalDataTask <9A09D8F8-351D-4BE3-A1F7-0E2E325DC7BA>.<4>, _NSURLErrorRelatedURLSessionTaskErrorKey=(
"LocalDataTask <9A09D8F8-351D-4BE3-A1F7-0E2E325DC7BA>.<4>"
), NSLocalizedDescription=已取消, _WKRecoveryAttempterErrorKey=<WKReloadFrameErrorRecoveryAttempter: 0x159acf6c0>, networkTaskDescription=LocalDataTask <9A09D8F8-351D-4BE3-A1F7-0E2E325DC7BA>.<4>, NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=https://oamobile.zmmc.com.cn:28385/pages/Reports/ZBReport.aspx?ShowInLegend=true&appid=69b487001fcc11bc30c7344e50768c3c&userid=9784299b-cced-4702-91b0-0476511ba8d2, NSErrorFailingURLKey=https://oamobile.zmmc.com.cn:28385/pages/Reports/ZBReport.aspx?ShowInLegend=true&appid=69b487001fcc11bc30c7344e50768c3c&userid=9784299b-cced-4702-91b0-0476511ba8d2, networkTaskMetricsPrivacyStance=Unknown}
Failed to terminate process: Error Domain=com.apple.extensionKit.errorDomain Code=18 "(null)" UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x159bd1830 {Error Domain=RBSRequestErrorDomain Code=3 "No such process found" UserInfo={NSLocalizedFailureReason=No such process found}}}
After upgrade to ios 26,
if WKWebView load url which did not contain "#" will always ok.
but load url contain “#” will cancel when start load, then result in white screen
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?
Hello,
We are setting up Apple Sign In in one of our non production websites but we keep getting a "oauth code says expired or revoked" error. We have created a brand new service ID and key for this but are still getting this error.
Topic:
Safari & Web
SubTopic:
General
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.