Apple Reverses Course on Home Screen Web Apps in the EU

We’re set to see some significant changes to how the iPhone works in the European Union when the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) comes into effect next week, but the good news is that it looks like the elimination of Home Screen web apps won’t be one of them.

The DMA is an attempt to make the digital economy in Europe more competitive by preventing companies like Apple from abusing their position as “gatekeepers” to lock customers into their own platforms. However, like most things written by committees and politicians, it’s also a rather complex and oft-inscrutable piece of legislation.

For example, while it’s pretty clear that Apple needs to open up app distribution, there’s a lot of wiggle room as to how far Apple has to go in doing this. Many opponents of Apple’s closed App Store hoped it would force the company to blow the doors wide open and offer full sideloading, allowing apps to be installed from anywhere, just like you can on a Mac or PC. Instead, Apple has done the minimum by restructuring its App Store fee structure to allow developers to use their own payment systems and letting other companies open up alternative app marketplaces — subject to some stringent requirements.

It remains to be seen if these policies will pass muster with the European Commission, but it appears that Apple has realized that there’s at least one thing it may not need to do to comply with the DMA.

The DMA also requires Apple to fully support third-party app browsers on the iPhone, which means Chrome can now use the same Blink engine on the iPhone as it does on the Mac, rather than simply being a wrapper to Apple’s WebKit engine, which is the case right now.

However, as part of this requirement, Apple believed it had to treat all browser engines equally to avoid running afoul of the DMA. Since Safari’s WebKit engine supported progressive web apps (PWAs) that could be run from your Home Screen, that gave it an unfair advantage over other browsers that would use their own engines.

Web apps present a serious security risk if they’re not handled properly. Since they all technically run in the same browser space, a malicious web app could hijack information and permissions from a valid one to gain access to things the user might not want it to, such as the camera, microphone, or location services. In WebKit, Apple addressed this by building a strong security architecture that keeps these apps isolated from each other in memory.

With third-party browser engines coming on board, Apple believed it had to ensure that these other engines had the same isolation enforced by iOS to handle web apps without compromising user privacy and security or keep the feature limited to its WebKit engine and risk being seen as anti-competitive due to offering extra capabilities that other browsers can’t take advantage of.

Faced with this choice, Apple decided that the only thing it could do was disable web apps entirely in iOS 17.4. After several beta testers noticed its disappearance early last month, Apple confirmed it was a deliberate removal, explaining that it had to “remove the Home Screen web apps feature in the EU” to comply with the DMA’s requirements.

However, it seems like Apple has realized that more people rely on Home Screen web apps than it first thought, leading its lawyers to take a closer look at the DMA and discover that perhaps they were a bit overzealous in interpreting it. Today, Apple officially announced that web apps will return in the final release of iOS 17.4 next week:

Previously, Apple announced plans to remove the Home Screen web apps capability in the EU as part of our efforts to comply with the DMA. The need to remove the capability was informed by the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps to support alternative browser engines that would require building a new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS.

We have received requests to continue to offer support for Home Screen web apps in iOS, therefore we will continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability in the EU. This support means Home Screen web apps continue to be built directly on WebKit and its security architecture, and align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS.

Developers and users who may have been impacted by the removal of Home Screen web apps in the beta release of iOS in the EU can expect the return of the existing functionality for Home Screen web apps with the availability of iOS 17.4 in early March.

For full transparency, Apple has posted this as an update to its FAQ on “Why don’t users in the EU have access to Home Screen web apps,” leaving its original statement intact.

The final release candidate of iOS 17.4 was sent out to developers this week and will likely be released to the public on Monday or Tuesday since the DMA is set to come into force on Wednesday.