First look at Google Chrome’s Blink engine running on an iPhone

Exciting news! I'm personally more excited to see Firefox on iOS running something other than the built-in engine, but anything other than Safari is a step in the right direction.

I recently switched from iOS to Android, and holy hell, the browser experience was the biggest change by a longshot. On iOS, "Safari Extensions" are downright awful -- unreliable, slow, and poorly integrated into the browser. I don't think it's the fault of any of the extension developers, it's just a bad API with a flaky implementation. You could tell that both the browser engine itself and the extensions API completely choke when you open up common clunky pages -- Zillow is one of the best examples of this, IMO.

Firefox on Android is such a breath of fresh air I can hardly believe it. Suddenly, I don't dread opening up pages in my browser because it actually works. There are settings, even if they aren't quite as robust as they are on desktop. I can install uBlock Origin. I can install RES, and Old Reddit Redirect, and Dark Reader. I can block annoying "install this app" pop-ups. And the add-ons are as reliable as they are on desktop! It makes you realize just how tightly Apple controls you when you use iOS.

Better yet, allowing alternative browser engines opens up the door for iOS devices to live much, much longer than they can today. I refuse to use old versions of iOS for general web browsing because Safari is a massive security hole baked right into the OS. But with alternative browser engines updated regularly via app updates, I would feel much safer on an old OS version.

Despite how much I despise everything being Blink, this is still good for competition on iOS

Buried the lede a bit - if you're a certified iOS developer and own a mac, you can build it for your test iPhone/ipad devices.

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/i...