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Ladybird passes the Apple 90% threshold on web-platform-tests
- everyone 1y agoOh yes cus Apple really care about the web.
- dotancohen 1y agoThe linked tweet notes that this is an important milestone in getting Ladybird considered as an alternative browser engine in iOS.
- jonny_eh 1y agoGood context for why "Apple" is in the headline
- jsheard 1y ago...in the EU at least, anywhere else Apple is going to say "no" regardless of how good your engine is.
- andrewl-hn 1y agoHow does it work for the likes of Google and Mozilla? Do they use their own engines for iOS versions in the EU and wrap WebKit for other areas?
- chrisldgk 1y agoAFAICT, Chrome and Firefox on iOS are still just WebKit wrappers. I’d love for that to change though, WebKit in iOS sucks in quite a few ways.
- m-s-y 1y agosuch as? I consider myself a power user and I've never run into anything I couldn't handle or get around. Genuinely curious.
- akersten 1y agoNo support for uBlock Origin and other tools that make the web sane
- WD-42 1y agoOrion is doing it somehow on iOS in a way I still don’t really understand.
- lukashahnart 1y agoAs far as I know, they just emulate the Chrome extension API right?
- pavon 1y agoNo they aren't? https://orionfeedback.org/d/9145-ublock-origin-not-existent-on-ios https://orionfeedback.org/d/9145-ublock-origin-not-existent-... https://orionfeedback.org/d/11882-ublock-origin-not-functioning-at-all-on-ios https://orionfeedback.org/d/11882-ublock-origin-not-function...
- GeekyBear 1y agoChrome doesn't allow the full version of uBlock Origin on desktop, or any version of it on mobile. How does Chrome have so much market share?
- bigyabai 1y agoBlink supports Windows, Android and Linux better than WebKit or Gecko does, to name at least one one reason. If it weren't for uBlock I'd probably be using a Chrome fork right now.
- GeekyBear 1y agoChrome on Android makes the web completely unusable without having access to uBlock, especially on resource constrained devices. Chrome on Windows doesn't allow the full version of uBlock Origin that still works on the YouTube website. It's just Google abusing its browser monopoly in the name of ad revenue.
- zb3 1y agoSo was there any app with an alternative browser engine already approved by Apple?
- ActionHank 1y agoIRC I think the roadblock isn't that they need to be approved, but that they can only distribute in the EU.
- mcny 1y agoIs distribution the only problem? If Mozilla or Google were to make their code freely available on some git forge like GitHub and I cloned the repo and built it myself, would I be able to run it for seven days or something in the US?
- SSLy 1y agonope, one can't get the entitlement -- even just for 7 days dev mode -- just like that.
- anticensor 1y agoDev mode packages are self-signed, aren't they?
- nicoburns 1y agoUnless it can be distributed it's not worth Mozilla or Google's time to bother developing support.
- zrm 1y ago> If Mozilla or Google were to make their code freely available on some git forge like GitHub https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox https://github.com/chromium/chromium https://github.com/chromium/chromium
- deleted 1y ago
- pizlonator 1y agoSuper impressive that an independent, non-corpo project has gotten this far this quickly.
- tracker1 1y agoDefinitely... IF they keep this up, they will be a real contender by the end of 2027. I keep saying I'd like to see a similar push for Servo though... since it's probably the next most feature-rich engine option. It really needs a corresponding browser project to go along side it though, since FF/Mozilla isn't that interested.
- radlad 1y agoI believe this would be Verso: https://github.com/versotile-org/verso https://github.com/versotile-org/verso
- latexr 1y agoThat repo is a mirror of the GitLab version. https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso/ https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso/ Seemed to have fairly frequent commits but they abruptly spotted 3 months ago. https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso/-/commits/main?ref_type=HEADS https://gitlab.com/verso-browser/verso/-/commits/main?ref_ty...
- fabrice_d 1y agoIt looks like Amazon has people looking at Servo integration in GTK: https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2025/10/01/servo-gtk/ https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2025/10/01/servo-gtk/
- nicce 1y agoBut how to pass tests securely, is completely different problem. This is conformance testing. But impressive regardless.
- nonethewiser 1y ago
- X0nic 1y agoI wonder how hard the last 10% will be? If its a typical software project its going to be 90% more effort for the last 10%.
- nicce 1y agoBrowsers have been historically the biggest and most difficult projects, so hard to say why it wouldn’t be. When they can start promising 20k bounties for segfaults, they are getting close.
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y agoThey are pretty far way from that. I still think it is one of the most exciting open source projects in recent years.
- jve 1y agoAs someone who has first encounter with the ladybird - why is it exciting? And how could ladybird attract so many sponsors for such a project? Why wouldn't they fund Firefox instead if they want to achieve some diversity in browser engine field? I'm curious, not skeptical.
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y agoIt's hard to fund Firefox when Mozilla spends as much money as they do on other things than Firefox.
- tredre3 1y ago> Browsers have been historically the biggest and most difficult projects That's just a tired thrope that keeps being repeated by people who don't know any better.
- viraptor 1y agoGiven how few generally usable browsers (3 with different skins) there are and how huge they are with basically required company backing for many employees... How is that a trope?
- andrewmcwatters 1y ago[flagged]
- crazygringo 1y agoLots of things may be scams, but it's hard to see how a reasonable level of quality control is.
- fsflover 1y agoThere's no quality control in AppStore, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732995.
- crazygringo 1y agoJust because there are some quality control failures (even if there are many) doesn't mean there should be no quality control at all.
- fsflover 1y agoIf even well-known offenders remain there, it just means, there's no guarantee of quality at all.
- crazygringo 1y agoAgain, just because there's no guarantee of quality doesn't mean there still can't be improvement in quality. Some measures are better than no measures. The world isn't black and white.
- fsflover 1y agoJust compare it with Debian repositories. Where's the malware in there?
- stronglikedan 1y agoOT, but I really like the name Ladybird for a silly reason - it's the name of Hank Hill's dog. Whenever I hear it I think of her and smile. That's right, the thought of a cartoon dog makes me happy. I told you it was silly.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 1y agoIn the UK a ladybird is what Americans call a ladybug.
- beepbooptheory 1y agoWell and knowing Hank, the dog is surely named after Lady Bird Johnson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Bird_Johnson
- dylan604 1y agoYou seem to totally be overlooking who Hank was paying homage to with that name. Thanks to Ladybird, spring time in Texas provides a colorful palette of wildflowers, especially the bluebonnet, to travelers along the highways.
- it_is_I 1y ago[dead]
- dylan604 1y agostupid bot replies are not welcome.
- singlepaynews 1y agoI'm impressed, how did you determine it was a botcomment?
- scosman 1y agoMe as engineer: it's wild a big corporation dictates a quality bar and limit API access for 3rd party software. Me as customer: oh man I'm sure glad stuff is reviewed to some quality bar and the OS limits API access.
- isodev 1y agoMe as customer: having trouble using the likes of GitHub and Threads using the "OS sanctioned browser"
- cosmic_cheese 1y agoThat's on nobody except Microsoft and Meta for testing against Chromium only.
- isodev 1y agoPerson in tech me is in conflict with customer me as to who is to blame. Maybe system imposed browser/agent defaults were a mistake after all.
- dylan604 1y agoSo it's okay for a website builder to test in only one browser defaulting to an imposed browser/agent restriction?
- mmis1000 1y agoThe point is they are not even compliment to their "own" spec. They are part of whatwg. But if you ever write web page. You will know it's always the safari that differs from the spec. Firefox in the other end never have such issue. Write a page on chrome, works 90% on Firefox. But will likely works 10% on safari. Supports safari literally means support another browser (by workaround all its bugs).
- 1y ago
- daft_pink 1y agoI think it’s just fantastic that the Ladybird browser is close to being usable. I was under the impression this was going to take many years before it became competitive.
- skywal_l 1y agoDon't hold your breath though. Looking at the September progress report[0] there are many many things to iron out. It's great progress but there are still several years of development for LB to be ready. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vsjIIiODhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vsjIIiODhY
- potwinkle 1y agoI've started using it for some websites. It's surprisingly very capable already.
- mrweasel 1y agoWhile I haven't tried it myself, I've seen a few of the monthly summaries videos. Passing the tests and being fast enough for daily usage is two very different things and right now Ladybird doesn't appear to be all that speedy. Still an amazing feat of development from the entire team.
- bangaladore 1y agoI was going to say the same thing. Why are the tests so disconnected from the usability? My assumption is the tests are closer to a unit test, while browsing a page is essentially an E2E test, and if anything in the pipeline goes wrong (especially given that we use complex JS everywhere) the result is essentially useless.
- zdragnar 1y agoThere's not a linear relationship between the tests and usability. There are many tests for various character encodings, but viewing a web page means you're only "using" one of them, for example. As such, 90% test pass rate but low usability simply means that 10% of the tests cover a lot of very visible usability features that ladybird hasn't addressed yet.
- flakiness 1y agoThere is a big jump in the graph! I wonder what contributed to that big improvement.
- apetresc 1y agoSomeone asked Andreas on that Twitter thread - it was the merging of the CSS Typed Object Model API spec.
- cupofjoakim 1y agoThis PR added ~6400 passes for some css stuff. That's not enough to warrant the spike I think, but surely helped: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/6370 https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/pull/6370
- foxglacier 1y agoYou can't tell if it's a big jump because the graph doesn't show the axes. Maybe it went from 89% to 90.2%. The jump may also be no more than typical previous increases not shown off the left-hand edge.
- jerf 1y agoThank you for the belly-laugh. It's Goodhart's Law in graph form. "Oh, is this metric important? Let me get right on that." No shade intended towards the Ladybird team. You were given the terms and you're behaving rationally in response to them. More power to you. It's just a fantastic demonstration of what it looks like to very suddenly be developing against a very specific metric.
- xmprt 1y agoHave you tried using Ladybird recently? Admittedly I haven't but I've seen the rapid progress they've made over the last year. They might just be targeting this arbitrary metric but I'm inclined to believe that they've made real progress towards building a usable browser.
- pizlonator 1y agoI think that this metric correlates well with the browser being usable on real websites Also, I don't think that the Ladybird folks are just doing the bare minimum to only increase their score on WPT. They're implementing each feature in such a way that basic browsing seems to work better and that their WPT score improves.
- fabrice_d 1y agoThe wpt score is not that well balanced. Look at https://staging.wpt.fyi/results/?product=servo&product=ladybird https://staging.wpt.fyi/results/?product=servo&product=ladyb... : out of about 2 million tests, more than half are for the "encoding" category. Good encoding support is needed for sure, but likely not at that level of prevalence.
- jerf 1y agoIt seems my communication did not adequately convey the fact that I have no problem with the Ladybird team doing this. It makes perfect sense and is the right thing to do. However, a jump like that means precisely and exactly what I said it means; very suddenly, that metric became much more important to the team. It is written straight into the graph. A large number of encoding-related tests that were probably relatively easy to fix in bulk is certainly a plausible explanation. A lot of people are imputing to me assumptions that they are bringing to my post, such as assuming that such improvements must be fake or bad or somehow otherwise cheating. Nope. Moreover, if you are thinking that, don't take it up with me, go take it up with the graph directly. It's not my graph. I'm just amused at the spectacular demonstration of Goodhart's Law. Are the commentators who think I'm being critical of the Ladybird project going to defend their implicit proposition that the browser got twice as good in whatever period that graph is in, a week or a month or whatever? Of course that's not the case.
- XCSme 1y agoWhat JS engine does it run on?
- Fuzzwah 1y agoIt's own, LibJS https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/tree/master/Libraries%2FLibJS https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/tree/master/Libr...
- XCSme 1y agoWow, how does it compare to V8 ? They spent many years optimising it.
- mouse_ 1y agoIt doesn't.
- gkbrk 1y agoLibJS from Ladybird has more spec-compliance than V8 (Chrome) and JavaScriptCore (Safari) in many categories. https://test262.fyi/ https://test262.fyi/
- barkingcat 1y agodoesn't this just mean the spec is overwritten? (and covering things that are not in use by the dominant engines) It's useless to get a higher score on compliance than the leading engines because ... no one else can use them.
- trflynn89 1y agoThe specs and the test suite are both moving targets. There are regularly new proposals to the specs, and new tests that cover them as they progress towards acceptance. The main engines implement these proposals behind feature flags, and only enable them once the proposal has been fully accepted. Ladybird does not hide implementations behind feature flags (yet) because there's no need when you don't have users. So its score on test262.fyi includes all proposals it has implemented thus far. The other engines on that site have an "experimental options" variant to include these proposals, which is a bit more of an honest comparison. As of right now, that shows: Spidermonkey (Firefox) at 98.3%, V8 (Chrome) at 97.9%, LibJS (Ladybird) at 96.9%, and JavaScriptCore (Safari) at 93.2%. Here's a link with those options selected: https://test262.fyi/#|v8_exp,jsc_exp,sm_exp,libjs https://test262.fyi/#|v8_exp,jsc_exp,sm_exp,libjs
- liquid_thyme 1y agoI wish them well, but browsers are very much pay-to-play. Google had to pay their way to their current dominant position.
- mouse_ 1y agoDon't forget, Firefox didn't succeed because Firefox was good, it succeeded because IE was bad. People don't like having to choose between Google Chrome and Google Firefox.
- npteljes 1y agoAd blockers were another huge draw, in my experience.
- liquid_thyme 1y agoNot anymore.. https://imgur.com/a/CARfuHZ https://imgur.com/a/CARfuHZ
- npteljes 1y agoAd-blockers are not just for YouTube. Moreover, addons can still be a draw for Firefox. For example, the built-in Multi-Container addon, and the ones that build on it, are very useful privacy and web testing tools.
- liquid_thyme 1y agoMy prediction is that they're going to slowly ban them from their properties, and also from websites where their ads are hosted. They will slowly pressurize Mozilla and anyone else they're funding.
- postepowanieadm 1y agoI'm not sure about it - there were other contestants: Opera, Netscape, even the big Mozilla Suite.
- lenerdenator 1y agoIf nothing else, having an alternative engine with any amount of viability at all that isn't Blink is great news. I'll be interested to see how this progresses.
- bbminner 1y agoNow that 90% of the work is done, it is only 90% of the work that remains :)
- londons_explore 1y ago[flagged]
- reaperducer 1y agoIf you have a spec and a test suite, shouldn't you really be passing all the tests before shipping this stuff to a user? Have you seen the state of the tech industry? "Ship it, then fix it" is considered normal now, for some reason.
- ramon156 1y agoIf you take a browser for example, you shouldn't be using any current browser. This is the best example of why this isn't always the way to go
- kermatt 1y agoIt is an open source project in development, that requires you build it from source to use. Are you suggesting they reach 100% code completion and test coverage before making it available to anyone?
- zodiac 1y agoNo browser passes 100% of WPT, the leader is chrome which has about 1000 failing tests
- aeyes 1y agoYou are a bit off, Chrome is failing over 50.000 tests.
- jm4 1y agoIt's still early in development. You are free to build it and run it, but there have been no actual releases to end users. It's very much alpha quality, if even that. It's still slow and full of bugs. However, the code quality is generally very good and there's great potential for this browser to eventually go somewhere. I don't think Andreas is suggesting that it will be offered on iOS any time soon so much as he is pointing out that they achieved this arbitrary milestone.
- guywithahat 1y agoIt's always struct me as interesting that ladybird is built with C++. I like C++, and prefer it to languages like Rust, but it's not uncommon to see new OSS projects using weird languages and the newest tools. Lots of languages offer improvements in regards to threading models, development speed, or cross-platform support which we don't get in C++. I suppose their success is likely directly related to the fact they made reasonable, practical development choices, but still.
- zrm 1y agoIt's the same language most of the code in Chrome and Firefox is written in. It's also not clear what you're looking for in terms of cross-platform support. Some languages provide better standard library support for UI elements, but that's the part a browser will be implementing for itself regardless.
- timeon 1y agoSure but those browsers started long time ago and are implementing some of newer stack in Rust.
- miloignis 1y agoI believe they are or will be transitioning to Swift: https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031
- hamandcheese 1y agoThis is often cited, but it seems like there has been very little movement toward swift since this tweet.
- tredre3 1y agoThey were/are waiting for better cross-platform support. When they decided on Swift, using it on Linux had just recently become workable but it still didn't have feature-parity with apple land. To me that all sounds like wishful thinking on their part. But I have a lot of faith in Andreas and the team, so I'm willing to take their opinion over my knee-jerk reaction shrugs.
- jgraham 1y agoAs someone who's been quite heavily involved with web-platform-tests, I'd caution against any use of the test pass rate as a metric for anything. That's not to belittle the considerable achievements of Ladybird; their progress is really impressive, and if web-platform-tests are helping their engineering efforts I consider that a win. New implementations of the web platform, including Ladybird, Servo, and Flow, are exciting to see. However, web-platform-tests specifically decided to optimise for being a useful engineering tool rather than being a good metric. That means there's no real attempt to balance the testsuite across the platform; for example a surprising fraction of the overall test count is encoding tests because they're easy to generate, not because it's an especially hard problem in browser development. We've also consciously wanted to ensure that contributing tests is low friction, both technically and socially, in order that people don't feel inclined to withhold useful tests. Again that's not the tradeoff you make for a good metric, but is the right one for a good engineering resource. The Interop Project is designed with different tradeoffs in mind, and overcomes some of these problems by selecting a subsets of tests which are broadly agreed to represent a useful level of coverage of an important feature. But unfortunately the current setup is designed for engines that are already implementing enough feature to be usable as general purpose web-browsers.
- sleepybrett 1y agoThen talk to apple. They are the ones who put this bar in place.
- manmal 1y agoWhy are you bringing this up, when it’s not been implemented as a metric here, but because Apple requires it for iOS.
- hamandcheese 1y ago> but because Apple requires it for iOS Therefore it is a metric used by Apple.
- fmajid 1y ago
- lossolo 1y agoWhat's the security story in Ladybird? Do they use sandboxes etc? I'm a bit concerned that hundreds of thousands of lines of C++ browser code written in just three years could be a minefield, but I hope I'm wrong.
- pilaf 1y agoLast I heard they were planning to move to Swift [1] partly because of the safety features. Apparently there are still some blockers [2] preventing that move though. 1: https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 2: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/issues/933 https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/issues/933
- fsflover 1y agoIf you care about security, consider using Qubes OS, which runs everything in hardware-isolated virtual machines. My daily driver, can't recommend it enough. Ladybird can already be safely used on Qubes.
- d33 1y agoI just tried building and running it. Surprisingly many websites already load fine, though Youtube doesn't and Vimeo/Reddit comment section crashed it. Still, the results are quite encouraging! It takes ~6GB of HDD to build it.
- logicallee 1y agoAlong the same lines, the State of Utopia will be building a free web browser for everyone, once AI is strong enough to do so. Please feel free to vote on feature ideas here: https://pollunit.com/polls/ahysed74t8gaktvqno100g https://pollunit.com/polls/ahysed74t8gaktvqno100g
- skulk 1y ago> teleports the founder and his wife to the same location so they can be together in person holding hands - they're already in the same same city and want to meet immediately, so they are 99.98% of the way there! They're both working 10 hours a day to bridge the remaining 0.02%. Following this proof of concept, other people will also be allowed to date, however at the moment all dating is prohibited until the founder and his wife meet successfully. Uhh.... I.... ok.
- logicallee 1y agoI didn't originally include this text in the browser feature vote, but I showed my wife the feature vote and she insisted that I need to include this part until it's solved. I can't wait for this to be done. I didn't see any feature suggestions from you, please feel free to suggest a browser feature for AI to build once it is powerful enough to do so, you can do so at the bottom of the page. It only takes a few seconds. Thank you.
- sn0n 1y agoHow's the ladybird gtk stuff coming along?
- KingMob 1y ago[flagged]
- alain_gilbert 1y ago[dead]
- KingMob 1y ago[flagged]
- DeepYogurt 1y agoYou love to see it
- Vipsy 1y agoThe WPT score is a flawed metric (encoding tests are overweighted), but it's one of the few objective yardsticks we have. What matters more is that Ladybird is finding spec ambiguities by implementing from scratch rather than cargo-culting Chrome's behavior. The real test isn't passing 90%—it's whether they can keep pace as the web platform adds new APIs faster than any independent team can implement them. Browser engine development has become a regulatory moat, and breaking it requires either massive funding or accepting permanent incompatibility with the "modern web." Still rooting for them. Browser monoculture is worse than metric gaming.
- Vipsy 1y agoThe WPT score is a flawed metric (encoding tests are overweighted), but it's one of the few objective yardsticks we have. What matters more is that Ladybird is finding spec ambiguities by implementing from scratch rather than cargo-culting Chrome's behavior. The real test isn't passing 90%—it's whether they can keep pace as the web platform adds new APIs faster than any independent team can implement them. Browser engine development has become a regulatory moat, and breaking it requires either massive funding or accepting permanent incompatibility with the "modern web." Still rooting for them. Browser monoculture is worse than metric gaming.
- LeFantome 1y agoImplementing a web browser is running to stand still for sure. But it is clear that Ladybird is implementing the spec faster than it is evolving. I am not saying they do not have A LOT left to do. But your comment almost makes it sound like they are falling behind and that is most certainly not the case. The team is quite pragmatic and many perfectly modern websites work already. Again, A LOT to do. But it is looking very doable. They still expect a "usable" release sometime next year.