After updating Xcode to the latest version we observed that SFSafariViewController is not loading web pages on Xcode 16 Simulator with iOS 18, whenever it is presented the View Controller is empty (does not load any content) and the app freezes, but other screens that use WKWebView are working normally. Also, during tests on physical devices with iOS 18 it seems to work just fine, so it might be just a IDE version problem. Is anyone experiencing the same issue? If so, did anyone find a solution for it?

our company created a web safari extension. before iOS 26 (beta) release we would archive our extension and install to our devices no problem. since iOS 26 (beta) (we also tried in beta 4 23A5297m) the extension would archive perfectly but when installing the extension would just not run. its found in settings under safari extension, but when enabled the extension and open safari it will show error message "Ext" is no longer available. to rule out all code issues, we built a new project from scratch with a new bundle id, tried to archive with no problem, but when installed in an iphone 16 with iOS 26 BETA (23A5297m) same error ocurs it installs but when opening safari it will give an error message saying extension is no longer available. attached in the google drive link is a zip file of the new project, a zip file with a succesfull build of the ipa file with enterprise distribute, a video of the entire proccess and the error that the iphone gives. also attached a log file from the iphone that includes the install and the crash of the app. within the logs there is a log saying Error occurred during transaction: The provided identifier "dev.sacal.ext" is invalid. before ios 26 the exact steps worked perfectly. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PYDOv8IRvRY_ouqiOc0sJdcfh0CHbL72/view?usp=sharing

I'm experiencing a Safari Web Extension issue where the non-persistant background script seems to crash after 30 seconds even when the content script is messaging it. Here is a minimal-reproducible example. When running in an emulator, the background script will stay responsive forever. However, when running on a physical device, the background script becomes non-responsive after 30 seconds of activity. It never becomes responsive again until I toggle the extensions enable/disable toggle, after which it stays active for 30 seconds and then crashes again.

Hi everyone, I’m encountering a serious reliability issue with message passing in my Safari extension on iOS 18.4.1 and iOS 18.5 In my extension, I use the standard messaging API where the background script sends a message to the content scrip. The content script is listening using: browser.runtime.onMessage.addListener(handler); This setup has been working reliably in previous versions of iOS, but since updating to iOS 18.4.1 and iOS 18.5, I’ve noticed that messages sent from the background script are not consistently received by the content script. From my logs, I can confirm that: The background script is sending the message. The content script’s listener is not always triggered. There are no errors or exceptions logged in either script. It seems as if browser.runtime.onMessage.addListener is either not getting registered in time or failing silently in some instances. This issue is intermittent and does not occur all the time. Has anyone else experienced similar issues in iOS 18.4.1 and 18.5? Are there any known changes or workarounds for ensuring reliable communication between background and content scripts in this version? Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I’m experiencing a crash in WKWebView on iOS 26 Developer Beta 5 and Beta 6 with the following exception: CALayer position contains NaN: [nan 65] The crash occurs when the following CSS properties are applied to content displayed in WKWebView: -webkit-user-select: none; -webkit-touch-callout: none; This issue happens consistently whenever these styles are set, leading to the crash inside WKWebView. Is this a known bug in the current iOS 26 betas, or is there a recommended workaround?

I'm converting a Chrome Extension to a Safari Web Extension, I found it's not easy to get favicon of current tab/url natively. The tab object in Safari doesn't have favIconUrl. { 	"id": 121, 	"index": 6, 	"active": true, 	"width": 1324, 	"audible": false, 	"url": "https://github.com/", 	"mutedInfo": { 		"muted": false 	}, 	"windowId": 2, 	"title": "GitHub", 	"incognito": false, 	"pinned": false, 	"height": 935, 	"highlighted": true, 	"status": "complete" } 		 2. I didn't find Safari has similar thing like chrome://favicon 3. I found Safari's favicon caches in ~/Library/Safari/Favicon Cache/favicons but have no idea how to use them in Safari Web Extension.

I am trying to run JavaScript only after the page has loaded, and according to here - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/safari_app_extensions/injecting_a_script_into_a_webpage, I should use DOMContentLoaded. However, it does not seem to work. This is my content.js file: function runOnStart() {     document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(e) {         document.body.style.background = "rgb(20, 20, 20)";         document.html.style.background = "rgb(20, 20, 20)";                var divElements = document.body.getElementsByTagName('div');         for(var i = 0; i < divElements.length; i++) {             let elem = divElements[i];             elem.style.background = "rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.05)";         }     }); } runOnStart(); If I take the code outside of the event listener, it runs fine, but a lot of the elements haven't loaded in yet so it doesn't work as it should. The function is definitely running, but the event listener simply doesn't work. I appreciate any help you can give!

Hi there! I'm new to App Development and I'm running into the following error when playing audio on a website loaded through a WKWebView: 0x112000cc0 - ProcessAssertion::acquireSync Failed to acquire RBS assertion 'WebKit Media Playback' for process with PID=70.197, error: 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)" UserInfo={NSLocalizedFailureReason=(originator doesn't have entitlement com.apple.runningboard.assertions.webkit AND originator doesn't have entitlement com.apple.multitasking.systemappassertions)} Looking through this forum, it seems more people have this issue, yet no one has found a solution (or posted it...). The solutions that I did find (Background Modes capability, webView.configuration.allowsInlineMediaPlayback = true), did nothing. To make sure the issue had nothing to do with my own code, I created an empty project to reproduce the issue. I'm not sure on the best way to share it, but it's a small file (forgive me, I have no clue what it does, actually chatGPT made it for me. My real application is a WebApp wrapped with Capacitor, so it handles all the Swift stuff) import SwiftUI import WebKit struct WebView: UIViewRepresentable { let urlString: String func makeUIView(context: Context) -> WKWebView { let webView = WKWebView() webView.configuration.allowsInlineMediaPlayback = true webView.configuration.allowsAirPlayForMediaPlayback = true webView.navigationDelegate = context.coordinator return webView } func updateUIView(_ uiView: WKWebView, context: Context) { if let url = URL(string: urlString) { let request = URLRequest(url: url) uiView.load(request) } } func makeCoordinator() -> Coordinator { Coordinator(self) } class Coordinator: NSObject, WKNavigationDelegate { var parent: WebView init(_ parent: WebView) { self.parent = parent } func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, didFailProvisionalNavigation navigation: WKNavigation!, withError error: Error) { print("Web page loading failed: \(error.localizedDescription)") } } } struct WebViewDemo: View { var body: some View { NavigationView { WebView(urlString: "https://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml5_audio_all") .navigationBarTitle("Web View") } } } struct WebView_Previews: PreviewProvider { static var previews: some View { WebViewDemo() } } Nothing special, right? When I build the app and navigate to a website that has an tag (https://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml5_audio_all). I still see the error when I play the audio. It plays nonetheless, but the error is there. I'm not at all interested in actually playing audio in the background/when the app is closed/suspended. I just want the error to go away! I've tried different iOS versions (14,15,16,17), but the problem persists. Anyone know what's happening?

We are experiencing an issue with Safari in all versions from 18.0 to 18.5 that does not occur in version 17. It affects both iPhones and Macs. And does not happen in Chrome or Windows. The problem is impacting our customers, and our monitoring tools show a dramatic increase in error volume as more users buy/upgrade to iOS 18. The issue relates to network connectivity that is lost randomly. I can reliably reproduce the issue online in production, as well as on my local development environment. For example our website backoffice has a ping, that has a frequency of X seconds, or when user is doing actions like add to a cart increasing the quantity that requires backend validation with some specific frequency the issue is noticable... To test this I ran a JS code to simulate a ping with a timer that calls a local-dev API (a probe that waits 2s to simulate "work") and delay the next HTTP requests with a dynamic value to simulate network conditions: Note: To even make the issue more clear, I'm using GET with application/json payload to make the request not simple, and require a Pre-flight request, which doubles the issue. (async () =&amp;gt; { for (let i = 0; i &amp;lt; 30; i++) { try { console.log(`Request start ${i} ${new Date().toLocaleString()}`); const res = await fetch(`https://api.redated.com:8090/1/*****/probe?`, { method: 'GET', mode: "cors", //headers: {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'}, headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' }, }); console.log(`Request end ${i} ${new Date().toLocaleString()} status:`, res.status); } catch (err) { console.error(`Request ${i} ${new Date().toLocaleString()} error:`, err); } let delta = Math.floor(Math.random() * 10); console.log("wait delta",delta); await new Promise(r =&amp;gt; setTimeout(r, 1000 - delta)); } })(); For simplicity lets see a case where it fails 1 time only out of 10 requests. (Adjusting the "delta" var on the time interval create more or less errors...) This are the results: The network connection was lost error, which is false, since this is on my localhost machine, but this happens many times and is very reproducible in local and production online. The dev-tools and network tab shows empty for status error, ip, connection_id etc.. its like the request is being terminated very soon. Later I did a detailed debugging with safari and wireshark to really nail down the network flow of the problem: I will explain what this means: Frame 10824 – 18:52:03.939197: new connection initiated (SYN, ACK, ECE). Frame 10831 – 18:52:04.061531: Client sends payload (preflight request) to the server. Frame 10959 – 18:52:09.207686: Server responds with data to (preflight response) to the client. Frame 10960 – 18:52:09.207856: Client acknowledges (ACK) receipt of the preflight response. Frame 10961 – 18:52:09.212188: Client sends the actual request payload after preflight OK and then server replies with ACK. Frame 11092 – 18:52:14.332951: Server sends the final payload (main request response) to the client. Frame 11093 – 18:52:14.333093: captures the client acknowledging the final server response, which marks the successful completion of the main request. Frame 11146 – 18:52:15.348433: [IMPORTANT] the client attempts to send another new request just one second later, which is extremely close to the keep-alive timeout of 1 second. The last message from the server was at 18:52:14.332951, meaning the connection’s keep-alive timeout is predicted to end around 18:52:15.332951 but it does not. The new request is sent at 18:52:15.348433, just microseconds after the predicted timeout. The request leaves before the client browser knows the connection is closed, but by the time it arrives at the server, the connection is already dead. Frame 11147 – 18:52:15.356910: Shows the server finally sending the FIN,ACK to indicate the connection is closed. This happens slightly later than the predicted time, at microsecond 356910 compared to the expected 332951. The FIN,ACK corresponds to sequence 1193 from the ACK of the last data packet in frame 11093. Conclusions: The root cause is related to network handling issues, when the server runs in a setting of keep-alive behavior and keep-alive timeout (in this case 1s) and network timming issue with Safari reusing a closed connection without retrying. In this situation the browser should retry the request, which is what other browsers do and what Safari did before version 18, since it did not suffer from this issue. This behaviour must differ from previous Safari versions (however i read all the public change logs and could not related the regression change). Also is more pronounced with HTTP/1.1 connections due to how the keep-alive is handled. When the server is configured with a short keep-alive timeout of 1 second, and requests are sent at roughly one-second intervals, such as API pings at fixed intervals or user actions like incrementing a cart quantity that trigger backend calls where the probability of failure is high. This effect is even more apparent when the request uses a preflight with POST because it doubles the chance, although GET requests are also affected. This was a just a test case, but in real production our monitoring tools started to detect a big increment with this network error at scale, many requests per day... which is very disrupting, because user actions are randomly being dropped when the user actions and timming happens to be just near a previous connection, where keep alive timeout kicks-in, but because the browser is not yet notified it re-uses the same connection, but by the time it arrived the server is a dead connection. The safari just does nothing about it, does not even retry, be it a pre-flight or not, it just gives this error. Other browsers don't have this issue. Thanks!

Hi everyone, I’m encountering a critical reliability issue with message passing in my Safari Web Extension on iOS 18.4.1 and iOS 18.5. In my extension, I’m using the standard messaging API. The background script sends a message to the content script using browser.tabs.sendMessage(...), and the content script registers a listener via: browser.runtime.onMessage.addListener(handler); This setup has been working reliably in all prior versions of iOS. However, after updating to iOS 18.4.1 and 18.5, I’ve noticed the following behavior: ✅ The content script is successfully injected, and onMessage.addListener is registered (I see logging confirming this). ✅ The background script sends the message using the correct tabId (also confirmed via logs). ❌ The content script’s onMessage listener is not consistently triggered. ⚠️ This issue is intermittent, sometimes the message is received, sometimes it is silently dropped. ❌ No exceptions or errors are thrown in either script, the message appears to be sent, but not picked up from the content script message listener.

Summary: Content scripts injected via manifest continue to receive and respond to chrome.tabs.sendMessage() calls even after the user has navigated away from the original page, causing messages intended for the current tab to be handled by zombie contexts from previous pages. Environment: Safari/iOS Version: 18.5 Extension Manifest: Version 3 Expected Behavior: When a user navigates from Page A to Page B: Page A's content script context should be destroyed. chrome.tabs.sendMessage(currentTabId, message) should only reach Page B's content script Only Page B should be able to respond to action button clicks (or other background to content messages). Actual Behavior: When navigating from Page A to Page B: Page A's content script context persists as a "zombie". chrome.tabs.sendMessage(currentTabId, message) reaches zombie context instead of the Page B's one. Hence, it looks like the extension is broken because the content script does not respond to the background messages. Details: Tab ids are properly recognized by both background and content script The problem does not always occur; it occurs on random occasions. It's quite easy to have it reproduced. It can be reproduced easier if user clicks ext icon during site loading (before it fully loaded), triggering ActionClick (ext icon click) event and then sending a msg upon it to the content script Regardless of whether the content script is injected into the tab using manifest.json, registerContentScripts, or executeScript, the problem is still there Once the problem occurs, e.g. user is on macys.com but zombie injected content script believes it's google.com (a previous page), even refreshing the tab doesnt change anything - zombie context is still there (thinking it's still google.com) . Changing a domain to something completely different one could help though. Then going back to macys.com could still lead to the described issue. A zombie content script does not have access to the page's console function and others. Example communication Sending following message from the background to the content script using chrome.tabs.sendMessage() { "tab": { "id": 155, "active": true, "url": "https://www.macys.com/", "title": "Macys.com" } } Results in the content-script zombie context response (the url is taken from the window.location.href) "message": { "type": "ActionClicked", "data": {} }, "response": { "data": { "windowUrl": "https://www.google.com/", "contentReached": true, "timestamp": "1,753,138,945,272", } } }

When I'm inspecting a WKWebView in a simulator and the WKWebView loads a local URL with a port number, I've found that most features of Safari dev tools that worked in iOS 17 are broken in iOS 18. Here are the steps I'm taking: Set up a WKWebView with isInspectable = true that loads a local URL, e.g. https://www.local.mydomain.com:3000 Install a self-signed SSL certificate on a simulator for www.local.mydomain.com Run my app on the simulator The WKWebView loads successfully In Safari on my Mac, I can select the WKWebView and open dev tools to inspect it If the simulator is on iOS 17, this works fine, no issues. But if the simulator is on iOS 18, Safari dev tools are mostly broken. I can tell that there is a connection to the WKWebView because the Network tab logs the requests that I expect. But I cannot use any of the other dev tools features: Elements, Sources, Console, etc. Has anyone else encountered this? Is there a workaround?

Hi all, Chrome has it already - animation-timeline aka scroll-animations. I can nowhere find any informations on what's the status in Safari/Webkit. Seems like they do not have it on the agenda at all? Does anyone know anything - I wanted to push a feature request for that - but also seem there is no feature request list anymore for webkit. See: https://www.w3.org/TR/scroll-animations/ Cheers and kind regards!

Device: iPhone 15pro, ios26.0 (23A 341) IOS version: 26.0 (23A 341) When using position: sticky; bottom: 0, the div is expected to stick to the bottom of the viewport when the browser toolbar hides while scrolling. However, it stops at the height where the toolbar was, instead of moving down with the disappearing toolbar. In the image below, the red-bordered navigation shows the situation where it does not stick to the bottom. i

Hello, I've got Smart App Banner set up on my website. However, I want to be able to measure the traffic coming from this banner to the app store / app (i.e. measure impressions/downloads). Apple documentation (https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/view-app-analytics/manage-campaigns/) says you can set up a campaign link and use it in the Smart Banner to track those who download / open the app store page using your smart banner (so that we can get attribution). However, there is no documentation at all in terms of how this should be added to the tag when implementing a Smart App Banner. I've tried so many different variations and none have tracked downloads. This includes a structure based on an example taken from WWDC from a few years back which also did not work. I would appreciate any help!

Hello Apple Developer Community, I'm experiencing an issue with PDF link interaction in WKWebView that appears to be specific to iOS 26. Problem Description: I'm loading a PDF in WKWebView.The links may vary widely and are not necessarily DPF, so I need to load them using WKWebView. On iOS versions prior to 26, links within the PDF are clickable and work correctly. On iOS 26, the same links are not clickable (no response when tapped). Expected Behavior: PDF links should remain clickable and functional across all iOS versions. What I've Tried: Tested opening the PDF directly in Safari on iOS 26 - links still not clickable This suggests the issue might be related to changes in the system's PDF rendering engine Reproduction Steps: Load the PDF URL in WKWebView Navigate to page 12 Attempt to tap the link Environment: Test Devices: iPhone 15(26.0 ) / iPhone 16 Pro Max(18.0.1 ) Xcode: 16.2 Questions: Is this an intentional change in iOS 26's PDF handling or WKWebView? If so, is there a new API or configuration to restore link interactivity? Any guidance or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Since iPadOS 18.x WKWebView seems to have a bug within its Fullscreen API (which can be enabled via WKPreferences.isElementFullscreenEnabled). This bug has the effect that websites trying to make an element (for example a video player) fullscreen fail to do so. This does not always happen, most of the time the fullscreen mode does work fine, but sometimes (far too often to be ignored) it does not. If an instance of WKWebView shows this issue, it can not be "fixed" by reloading the page or loading other pages, this issue exists in this instance forever. My App is a web browser App so I can create and remove WKWebView instance easily (by opening or closing Tabs). And there are times where I never see this bug, and times where ever other tab shows this bug. It's totally unreliable. The App does not show any issues at all when running under iPadOS 17 or older. The issue is only present under iPadOS 18.x. After some testing I've found out that when the bug has affected an instance of WKWebView, the JavaScript call element.requestFullscreen() will work if the element is a video element, but does no longer work if it is another element (like a DIV). If an instance of WKWebView is not affected by this bug, element.requestFullscreen() will work for all HTML elements. Does anyone has experienced this bug as well? And maybe found a workaround? Or maybe found a pattern which helps to find out what exactly is triggering this bug?

Hello there I have a nested USDZ file I had created a long time ago with some make-up products. Its behaviour was always the same in the past: nested usdz files allow you to control each object "nested" separately. So I used this as a way to allow people to play around with a "set of objects". Today I went to try it and since I'm on ios 18 it shows an "assets tab" on the bottom that allows me to see all the assets inside the tab but doesn't allow me to see or anchor them at all! What changes do I need to do in order for this to work and where can I check documentation on these new behaviours for USDZ files? And what will this allow for in the future? Thank you in advance

I'm developing an application that needs smooth framerates within a wkwebview that interacts with native code. However, requestAnimationFrame by default is still throttled to 60hz even if all my target devices (the iPad Pro for example) have supported 120hz for a long time already. I noticed that the latest Safari in 18.3 beta supports unlocked framerates, but that's only under Safari feature flags. To my knowledge, these flags do not apply to WKWebView. Is there a way to enable unlocked framerate in WKWebView via requestAnimationFrame? (Calling JS at a faster rate from the native code side will not work, almost definitely, since WKWebView will still render at its own rate.) This is an experimental application for internal use and I'm okay if there are temporary beta solutions available.

It seems fetch() does not include credentials (cookie) even when credentials: include is used and Safari extension has host_permissions for that domain when using from a non-default Safari profile. It includes credentials (cookie) when using from the default profile (which has the default name Personal). Is there anyone who has this problem? I try to request in popup.js like this: const response = await fetch( url, { method: 'GET', mode: 'cors', credentials: 'include', referrerPolicy: 'no-referrer', } ); and it does not include the credentials (cookie) from host_permissions. I already posted https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/764279, and opened feedback assistant (FB15307169). But it is still not fixed yet. (macOS 15.4 beta 3) I hope this is fixed soon.