Just a few weeks ago, Apple announced that web apps, or PWAs (progressive web apps), would stop working on iPhones in the European Union. They would do this with the arrival of iOS 17.4, and Apple’s stated reason at the time was that they had to comply with DMA, and a “completely new integration architecture” would be needed to achieve such a thing at our borders. “not practical.” They finally backed down and said no, Apple will not kill PWAs.

Let’s start from the beginning. Apple needs to comply with DMA from now on (hence all changes regarding third-party stores). One precaution you should take is to allow third-party browsers like Google Chrome to use their own engines on iOS and not rely on WebKit. There are currently many alternative browsers on the App Store, but they are all based on the same engine; A product of WebKit and Apple.

The background technology is the same in all browsers, and with this launch, the race to have the best browser on iOS will begin. In fact, it is no coincidence that Google has launched such an aggressive advertising campaign to invite users to use Google Chrome on iOS. In this sense, the winds of change are blowing.

PWA. It stands for Progressive Web Applications and, in short, it is a technology that allows you to instantly convert any web page into an application and add it to your mobile desktop. It is a very popular technology among developers because they can leverage the code of web applications without having to develop native versions for each architecture.

iOS has supported this technology since iOS 11.3 (that is, since 2018), and it is vital that some services work on iPhones. For example, NVIDIA GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming and Amazon Luna run on Apple phones precisely thanks to PWAs.

Elimination. As Apple noted at the time (two weeks ago), PWAs would disappear from iOS because an “entirely new integration architecture” would have to be created “impractically” by having to support alternative engines to WebKit. The implementation of Apple’s web applications is based on WebKit, as this allowed them to be compatible with the iOS security and privacy model. Essentially, what was previously a web application will turn into a browser bookmark with this change.

out of elimination. Eventually Apple decided to back down. “We have received requests to continue offering support for web apps on the home screen on iOS, so we will continue to offer the existing web apps feature on the home screen in the EU,” according to a statement from the company. But they note that “this compatibility means that home screen web apps continue to rely directly on WebKit and its security architecture, and comply with the security and privacy model of native iOS apps.”

So everything will continue to work as before, but developers will need to continue using WebKit for their applications. The problem is that this entails certain limitations, such as the app not being able to fully access certain components such as USB or Bluetooth connectivity; or send push notifications.

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