Apple surprisingly announced on Friday afternoon that it would retain the function for web apps on the home screen in the EU as before. The original plan was to withdraw the options for Progressive Web Apps (PWA) for users in the European Union with iOS 17.4. Apple justified this with requirements as a result of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which comes into full force on March 7th.
Advertisement
An Apple information page now states that due to requests, support for home screen web apps in iOS will be retained. It continues: “This support means that Home Screen web apps continue to be built directly on WebKit and its security architecture, and are consistent with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS.”
Apple responds to user input
Apple had previously justified the abandonment of web apps in the EU by saying that the future support for alternative browser engines would have required the development of a new integration architecture. Since Cupertino assumed that only a small number of users used web apps regularly, they wanted to avoid this. Web app support suddenly disappeared during the iOS 17.4 beta phase. Only after some time did Apple give a reason for this.
Progressive web apps are websites that appear on the smartphone like a native app and also contain functions known from native apps. These include receiving push notifications, displaying badges (e.g. with the number of unread messages) in the app icon on the home screen or access to manufacturer interfaces to the system.
According to Apple, developers and users affected by the removal of homescreen web apps in the beta version of iOS in the EU can expect the return of existing functionality for homescreen web apps with the availability of iOS 17.4 in early March .
(mki)