Apple has changed its mind to disable PWA web apps support for European Union residents. The Cupertino giant said that nothing will change in this regard with the release of iOS 17.4 for EU citizens, and web applications will continue to be available to them. As a reminder, Apple had previously announced that it would disable these for the EU and even did so in the beta version of iOS 17.4.

The company explained that making PWA applications compliant with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) would require a completely new integration architecture, which would be impractical to implement. One of these changes in particular requires Apple to allow third-party browsers to use its own engines on iOS; This is a problem because web applications are built directly on top of the Webkit engine on which Safari is based.

Apple now says PWAs will remain and will continue to work solely on Webkit. So for Apple this does not cause any problems and probably does not violate the new law of the European Union.

Apple previously announced plans to remove access to home screen web apps in the EU as part of our DMA compliance efforts. The removal was necessary due to complex security and privacy concerns around web applications supporting alternative browser engines; this required a new integration architecture that is not currently available in iOS.

We’ve received requests to continue supporting web apps on iOS, so we’ll continue to support them in the EU. This support means that web apps are still built directly on top of WebKit and its security architecture, and follow the security and privacy model of native iOS apps.

Developers and users who may have been affected by the removal of web apps in the EU iOS beta can expect the return of existing features with the release of iOS 17.4 in early March.