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?

Hi everyone, I’m working on an app that uses WKWebView. Due to security concerns, our customers want the app to disable copy-paste functionality and similar options (such as Lookup and Share, allowing users to extract text from the app or save it as a file. I was able to disable copy-paste and remove UIMenu options like Lookup and Share. Everything worked fine until the iOS 18.1 beta, which introduced a new menu called Writing Tools (Apple Intelligence) that has its own copy and share buttons I've tried several ways to remove it Remove all UIMenu items using canPerformAction, and it works for all menus but Writing Tools, which still remains override func canPerformAction(_ action: Selector, withSender sender: Any?) -> Bool { return false } Remove it from UIMenuBuilder override func buildMenu(with builder: UIMenuBuilder) { builder.remove(menu: .lookup) builder.remove(menu: .share) } But unfortunately, UIMenuBuilder does not have an identifier for Writing Tools, and it seems like there are no API changes from Xcode 15 to Xcode 16 (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uimenu/identifier) It seems like the only way to disable it through MDM configuration (key: allowWritingTools), but we don't use MDM https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/restrictions Environment iOS Version: iOS 18.1 beta4 Device: iPhone 15 Pro App platform: iOS Xcode version: 16.0 MacOS: 15.0 Thank you

Safari cannot open the page due to the error 'WebKit encountered an internal error.' We are using https://github.com/stleamist/BetterSafariView.git, and it was working fine before we updated to Xcode 16.

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.

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

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 () => { for (let i = 0; i < 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 => 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, I am developing the Click & Read web add-on for Chromium, Firefox and Safari. We use xcrun safari-web-extension-converter tool to generate the Safari add-on. The build on Xcode had no meaning errors/warnings, until we had to switch to a more up-to-date MacBook (required as deprecated Mac had no support for latest macOS and thus for Xcode compatibility !). So now I build my add-on on an Apple M1 MB Air on Sequoia 15.0 with latest Xcode, but I encounter an error ? or warning ? : NSBundle file:///System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MetalTools.framework/ principal class is nil because all fallbacks have failed Unable to create bundle at URL ((null)): normalized URL null Unable to create bundle at URL ((null)): normalized URL null Unable to create bundle at URL ((null)): normalized URL null But it doesn't prevent the add-on build to complete as I am able to open it onto Safari. Then, when loading the add-on on a test web page, I get this error on safari console: Error: Invalid call to runtime.connect(). No runtime.onConnect listeners found. BTW, the same add-on Dist works as expected on Chrome or Firefox (on macOS). So it seems the runtime listener runtime.onConnect.addListener isn't initiated on Background script... Thanks for your feedback and help

Hi, I had been working on an extension without any issues, running it from Xcode and debugging locally in Safari. However, without making any code changes, and after uninstalling the extension, it stopped appearing in Safari after building for local debugging. Does anyone know what might be happening or how I can clean up the system? Thanks a lot and best regards.

I have a basic setup following WWDC 2020 on Safari Web Extensions and another one on XPC. The video even mentions that one can use UserDefaults or XPC to communicate with the host app. Here is my setup. macOS 15.2, Xcode 16.2 A macOS app (all targets sandboxed, with an app group) with 3 targets: SwiftUI Hello World web extension XPC Service The web extension itself works and can update UserDefaults, which can then be read by SwiftUI app - everything works by the book. The app can communicate to the XPC service via NSXPCConnection - again, everything works fine. The problem is that the web extension does not communicate with XPC, and this is what I need so that I can avoid using UserDefaults for larger and more complex payloads. Web Ext handler code: class SafariWebExtensionHandler: NSObject, NSExtensionRequestHandling { func beginRequest(with context: NSExtensionContext) { // Unpack the message from Safari Web Extension. let item = context.inputItems[0] as? NSExtensionItem let message = item?.userInfo?[SFExtensionMessageKey] // Update the value in UserDefaults. let defaults = UserDefaults(suiteName: "com.***.AppName.group") let messageDictionary = message as? [String: String] if messageDictionary?["message"] == "Word highlighted" { var currentValue = defaults?.integer(forKey: "WordHighlightedCount") ?? 0 currentValue += 1 defaults?.set(currentValue, forKey: "WordHighlightedCount") } let response = NSExtensionItem() response.userInfo = [ SFExtensionMessageKey: [ "Response to": message ] ] os_log(.default, "setting up XPC connection") let xpcConnection = NSXPCConnection(serviceName: "com.***.AppName.AppName-XPC-Service") xpcConnection.remoteObjectInterface = NSXPCInterface(with: AppName_XPC_ServiceProtocol.self) xpcConnection.resume() let service = xpcConnection.remoteObjectProxyWithErrorHandler { error in os_log(.default, "Received error: %{public}@", error as CVarArg) } as? AppName_XPC_ServiceProtocol service?.performCalculation(firstNumber: 23, secondNumber: 19) { result in NSLog("Result of calculation XPC is: \(result)") os_log(.default, "Result of calculation XPC is: \(result)") context.completeRequest(returningItems: [response], completionHandler: nil) } } } The error I'm getting: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4099 "The connection to service named com.***.AppName.AppName-XPC-Service was invalidated: failed at lookup with error 3 - No such process." What am I missing?

I have a hybrid mobile app which loads web server screens in its iframe(which is under the WKWebView); an https request is initiated from the mobile app to the web server which returns the html page to be loaded in the iframe. The calls which are initiated from outside the iframe have cookies maintained in their requests, while the ones initiated from inside the iframe(web server page) loose the cookies and do not inherit them in IOS beta 18 while It worked fine in the previous IOS versions. Anybody has infos about this or similar cases?

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!

(related post: How to optimize my app for for a carrier-provided satellite network? ) I am trying to implement an app so that it works under a carrier-provided satellite network. The app uses (AS)WebAuthenticationSession for signing in. If the app is entitled to access a satellite network, will (AS)WebAuthenticationSession work as well? How about WKWebView and SFSafariViewController? Is there a way to test(simulate) a ultra-constrained network on a device or a simulator to see the expected behavior? Thanks,

From a mail app or similar, when opening a webpage in Safari as an external browser, JavaScript on the webpage stops running if Safari goes into the background. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Sample code for the counter: Behavior: Upon returning from the background, the counter continues for about 7-8 seconds but does not progress further. For example, if Safari is kept in the background for about 20 seconds and then brought back, the counter stops at around 7-8 seconds and only resumes counting after returning to the foreground. Expectation: The counter should continue running even if Safari goes into the background.

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 am using two iPhone11 devices, having iOS v17.6.1 for automation testing using Seleniumv4.X-Appium v2.x. Today I updated the mac to Sequoia15 version which updated the XCode to v16. Just after this update, I could not able to run the previously running automation script. The console message is "org.openqa.selenium.SessionNotCreatedException: Could not start a new session. Response code 500. Message: Unable to launch WebDriverAgent. Original error: xcodebuild failed with code 70. This usually indicates an issue with the local Xcode setup or WebDriverAgent project configuration or the driver-to-platform version mismatch."

Hi! I have a rather complicated SwiftUI browser app with a WKWebView. There is an option to reload the website after a configurable amount of time. Starting with iOS 18, the app crashes after repeated reloads. How many reloads that are required depends on the device, sometimes 100, sometimes 1000. Reloading is done via a timer that triggers the following code on the main thread: let request = URLRequest(url: url, cachePolicy: policy) self.parent.webView.load(request) The URL is configurable and cachePolicy can be either .reloadIgnoringLocalAndRemoteCacheData or .useProtocolCachePolicy How the crash affects the device also differs from device to device and from time to time. I have suffered from the following crashtypes: App is killed App is killed and Safari also stops working App is killed and the whole OS is really slow The WKWebView stops loading and hangs at 20%. The device is rebooted My app has an option to disable cache. Cache is disabled by setting cachePolicy to .reloadIgnoringLocalAndRemoteCacheData and by removing all cache in a rather complicated way. Basicly i'm doing something like this: dataStore.removeData(ofTypes: types, modifiedSince: Date.distantPast, completionHandler: nil) if let klazz = NSClassFromString("Web" + "History"), let clazz = klazz as AnyObject as? NSObjectProtocol { if clazz.responds(to: Selector(("optional" + "Shared" + "History"))) { if let webHistory = clazz.perform(Selector(("optional" + "Shared" + "History"))) { let o = webHistory.takeUnretainedValue() _ = o.perform(Selector(("remove" + "All" + "Items"))) } } } if let cachesPath = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(.cachesDirectory, .userDomainMask, true).first { let contents = (try? FileManager.default.contentsOfDirectory(atPath: cachesPath)) ?? [] for file in contents { if foldersToDelete.contains(file) { let path = cachesPath.appending("/").appending(file) do { try FileManager.default.removeItem(atPath: path) } catch { print("Can't delete cache file: \(path), error: \(error.localizedDescription)") } } } } The cache state affects the intensity of the crash. Disabling the cache shortens the time the app is working, while enabling the cache reduces the intensity of the bug. Based on my investigation, I suspect that loading a website in a WKWebVew leaks memory in iOS 18. If the whole website needs to be requested (= caching off), it results in a more significant memory leak and a faster crash time. Is this a known issue? Am I doing something wrong? Is there a potential workaround?

It is outrageous that Apple continue to fail to implement the Fullscreen API web standard for web apps on iPhone only, which is so important to accessibility and web app functionality. The only possible reason for this block is commercial: to promote iOS apps instead of browser based web apps. To quote a client from a major agency just now - a typical enquiry : We value accessibility greatly, and we noticed that the embedded player is missing a full screen button on iPhone. Everything else works perfectly fine, including a full screen button that appears on the mobile webpage on android devices. Is there any way we can include a button to enable full screen view for our viewers in your player that are going to watch it on iOS devices? To which, as usual, we have to reply: Apple unfortunately block fullscreen mode from being used with all web applications on iPhone. Apple will allow this to be displayed fullscreen on MacBooks and iPads, but currently not on on iPhone - so we have to hide the fullscreen button there. So fullscreen works on all devices and browsers apart from on iPhone. As you've seen with Android, all other devices and browsers follow the universal 'Fullscreen API' web standard to allow full screen. You're probably familiar with seeing the fullscreen button on normal linear videos on iPhone. These use Apple's native video player, which doesn't let buttons and scripts be used on top of it - just a single video, not an interactive web application. Our player looks like a video player but it is actually a web app combining multiple different video clips connected together by code and styling. They block it on iPhones for reasons known only to them, but the assumption is that it is to incentivise people to make iOS apps instead of web apps. The web development community is hopeful that Apple will change this unfortunate restriction soon, but we have been waiting a long time in vain. We have to send this to a lot of people. It's a very bad look for Apple. In less than a month it will be 2025. We have been waiting years for this. The web standard documentation showing universal support on other devices and browsers is here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fullscreen_API This is not acceptable. It is time for Apple to stop blocking this important accessibility web standard for commercial reasons - only on iPhone. To whoever is in charge of these decisions in the Safari/Webkit team: Please just enable Fullscreen API for web apps on iPhone as soon as possible.

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?

I am currently operating an app using an embedded web server that communicates over local HTTP. Recently, when opening Safari, I started encountering the following error message: "Safari cannot open the page. Error: Failed to navigate to an HTTP URL with HTTPS-only mode enabled." However, I am currently in a situation where switching to HTTPS is difficult. Are there any solutions to resolve this issue besides using HTTPS? Thank you.🙏