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You can now switch your default browser in iOS, with Brave being one of the options.

kmonsen 6y ago
I thought they still had to use Apple webview for rendering web content meaning as blockers should not be significant different?
- bnjemian 6y ago
  Ah, that may be. Any iOS devs wanna weigh in?
  - croes 6y ago
    Apple only allows their browser engine
- criddell 6y ago
  IMHO, that's probably a good thing as long as Apple stays small. If a Chromium-based browser took over iOS as well, it would be the only rendering engine anybody targets.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    What I was trying to say is that ad blocking cannot really be a lot better than Safari? You would have to block on the network level and not the content level.
  - damnyou 6y ago
    Apple should open up its app store to GeckoView, then. It would be great to have both WebKit and GeckoView as options.
BenTheElder 6y ago
But all of them are safari core, Apple does not allow other browser runtimes, they're only the custom UI around the webview. [1] All of the core browser bits including adblocking are safari still in every iOS browser on the app store. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ > 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript. (i.e. ~safari webview)
- PaulRobinson 6y ago
  You're going to have to provide rather incredible evidence that adblocking is broken on iOS, because it's a rather incredible claim.
  - BenTheElder 6y ago
    If you read my comment again you'll note the only claim I make about adblocking is that all browsers must use the same runtime. I don't claim that it's broken, but the ability to switch browsers (finally!) doesn't seem terribly relevant given that they're all required to essentially be safari skins.
- JimDabell 6y ago
  > But all of them are safari core, Apple does not allow other browser runtimes, they're only the custom UI around the webview. [1] You’re mixing up Safari and WebKit. This gives a misleading impression. Safari is Apple’s web browser. WebKit is Apple’s rendering engine. There’s much more to a browser than its rendering engine. Apple requires browsers to use WebKit, not Safari. Everything else – add-ons, syncing, UI, homepage, etc. – can be completely custom. I’d be pretty pissed off if I were a developer working on a browser for iOS and everybody treated all of my hard work as if it were nothing. Alternative browsers aren’t just reskinned Safari. They are entire applications of their own.
  - BenTheElder 6y ago
    In this context they're more or less the same, because the relevant networking / adblocking bits are in webkit, AIUI. It's true that safari and webkit are not the same, this comment is imprecise. But switching browsers won't net you different adblocking capability due to the restriction to use apples webkit core. Edit: that is "safari core" is a very lazy shorthand for the webkit framework here. The impact to the user is pretty much the same in this context.
    - JimDabell 6y ago
      > switching browsers won't net you different adblocking capability due to the restriction to use apples webkit core. That depends on what you mean by “different adblocking capability”. It’s absolutely possible for alternative browsers to block different things to Safari. I can think of three ways to do it off the top of my head: add a content rule list; inject JavaScript to remove elements from the DOM; inject CSS to hide elements.
deleted 6y ago
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captn3m0 6y ago
Changing the default browser doesn't get you much far: 1. Not all apps will use the default browser. 2. You can't uninstall Safari 3. Safari's content blocking framework doesn't work for third-party browsers. This means no adblocker. 4. iOS has a great time-tracking feature that lets you block websites beyond certain usage. Once again, only works on Safari. Not to mention that we still don't have extensions in Firefox.

I thought they still had to use Apple webview for rendering web content meaning as blockers should not be significant different?

bnjemian 6y ago
Ah, that may be. Any iOS devs wanna weigh in?
- croes 6y ago
  Apple only allows their browser engine
criddell 6y ago
IMHO, that's probably a good thing as long as Apple stays small. If a Chromium-based browser took over iOS as well, it would be the only rendering engine anybody targets.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  What I was trying to say is that ad blocking cannot really be a lot better than Safari? You would have to block on the network level and not the content level.
- damnyou 6y ago
  Apple should open up its app store to GeckoView, then. It would be great to have both WebKit and GeckoView as options.

BenTheElder 6y ago

But all of them are safari core, Apple does not allow other browser runtimes, they're only the custom UI around the webview. [1] All of the core browser bits including adblocking are safari still in every iOS browser on the app store. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ > 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript. (i.e. ~safari webview)

PaulRobinson 6y ago
You're going to have to provide rather incredible evidence that adblocking is broken on iOS, because it's a rather incredible claim.
- BenTheElder 6y ago
  If you read my comment again you'll note the only claim I make about adblocking is that all browsers must use the same runtime. I don't claim that it's broken, but the ability to switch browsers (finally!) doesn't seem terribly relevant given that they're all required to essentially be safari skins.
JimDabell 6y ago
> But all of them are safari core, Apple does not allow other browser runtimes, they're only the custom UI around the webview. [1] You’re mixing up Safari and WebKit. This gives a misleading impression. Safari is Apple’s web browser. WebKit is Apple’s rendering engine. There’s much more to a browser than its rendering engine. Apple requires browsers to use WebKit, not Safari. Everything else – add-ons, syncing, UI, homepage, etc. – can be completely custom. I’d be pretty pissed off if I were a developer working on a browser for iOS and everybody treated all of my hard work as if it were nothing. Alternative browsers aren’t just reskinned Safari. They are entire applications of their own.
- BenTheElder 6y ago
  In this context they're more or less the same, because the relevant networking / adblocking bits are in webkit, AIUI. It's true that safari and webkit are not the same, this comment is imprecise. But switching browsers won't net you different adblocking capability due to the restriction to use apples webkit core. Edit: that is "safari core" is a very lazy shorthand for the webkit framework here. The impact to the user is pretty much the same in this context.
  - JimDabell 6y ago
    > switching browsers won't net you different adblocking capability due to the restriction to use apples webkit core. That depends on what you mean by “different adblocking capability”. It’s absolutely possible for alternative browsers to block different things to Safari. I can think of three ways to do it off the top of my head: add a content rule list; inject JavaScript to remove elements from the DOM; inject CSS to hide elements.

deleted 6y ago

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captn3m0 6y ago

Changing the default browser doesn't get you much far: 1. Not all apps will use the default browser. 2. You can't uninstall Safari 3. Safari's content blocking framework doesn't work for third-party browsers. This means no adblocker. 4. iOS has a great time-tracking feature that lets you block websites beyond certain usage. Once again, only works on Safari. Not to mention that we still don't have extensions in Firefox.