Chrome iOS browser on Blink

Earlier this year, under pressure from the European Union, Apple was finally forced to open up iOS and allow alternative browser engines, at least in the EU. Up until then, Apple only allowed its own WebKit engine to run on iOS, meaning that even what seemed like third-party browsers – Chrome, Firefox, and so on – were all just Safari skins, running Apple’s WebKit underneath (with additional restrictions to make them perform worse than Safari). Even with other browser engines now being allowed on iOS in the EU, there’s still hurdles, as Apple requires browser makers to maintain two different browsers, one for the EU, and another one for the rest of the world.

It seems the Chromium community is already working on bringing the Chromium Blink browser engine to iOS, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. A blog post by the open source consultancy company Igalia digs into the details, since they are contributing to the effort. While they’ve got the basics covered, it’s far from completed or ready for release.

We’ve briefly looked at the current status of the project so far, but many functionalities still need to be supported. For example, regarding UI features, functionalities such as printing preview, download, text selection, request desktop site, zoom text, translate, find in page, and touch events are not yet implemented or are not functioning correctly.

Moreover, there are numerous failing or skipped tests in unit tests, browser tests, and web tests. Ensuring that these tests are enabled and passing the test should also be a key focus moving forward.
↫ Gyuyoung Weblog

I don’t use iOS, nor do I intend to any time soon, but the coming availability of browser engines that compete with WebKit is going to be great for the web. I’ve heard from so many web developers that Safari on iOS is a bit of a nightmare to support, since without any competition on iOS it often stagnates and lags behind in supporting features other browsers already implemented. With WebKit on iOS facing competition, that might change.

Now, there’s a line of thought that all this will do is make Chrome even more dominant, but I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. Safari is still the default for most people, and changing defaults is not something most people will do, especially not the average iOS user. On top of that, this is only available in the EU, so I honestly don’t think we have to worry about this any time soon, but obviously, we do have to remain vigilant.