iOS 18.2: web apps finally independent of Safari

iOS 18.2 isentered beta testing phase this week. This new update is intended to be quite interesting, since it brings important changes in terms of AI, but also opening up to competition from Apple. Thus, new options appear in the settings, in particular to change the default apps and replace Safari with Chrome for example.

This goes even further, since third-party browsers, such as Google Chromecan under iOS 18.2 benefit from their own web engine. Until then, they had to be based on WebKit, the native iOS web engine.

Thus, a Firefox will run under its own Quecko engine. And all so-called “chromium” browsers (based on Google Chrome), such as Vivaldi, Brave or Opera, will run under the Google Chrome engine, Blink. This should make it possible to optimize the performance of each of these browsers.

We have also just learned that this opening at the level of web engines would affect web apps, these apps recorded on the App Store home screen from a website and which until now were confined to the Safari engine.

Under iOS 18.2, a web app could be powered by Blink or Guecko, therefore. In any case, this is what theApple developer documentation, recently deployed on the occasion of the release of beta 1 of iOS 18.2.

Otherwise, note that this update should also bring the following new features:

• Playground
• Genmoji
• Image Wand
• ChatGPT in Siri
• Visual Intelligence

Many of these contributions are exclusive to Apple Intelligence and therefore todevices that support AI. However, to date, European machines are not affected. The latest news is that Apple Intelligence will arrive in France in 2025.

Editor-in-chief for iPhon.fr. Pierre is like Indiana Jones, looking for the lost iOS trick. Also a long-time Mac user, Apple devices hold no secrets for him. Contact: pierre[a]iphon.fr.