Open Source Community Works on Porting the Blink Engine to iOS, But Progress is Slow and a New Version of Chrome is Still Far Off
Brook.X
Under pressure from the European Union, Apple has opened up the browser engine on the iOS platform, no longer mandating that all browsers must use Apple's WebKit engine. However, this exception is limited only to the EU market.
Currently, Google and the Mozilla Foundation are attempting to port their own engines to iOS. For example, Google is aiming to develop a version of the Chrome browser based on the Blink engine instead of wrapping the Apple WebKit engine.
However, porting is a very challenging task. Although the Chromium open-source community has started the porting process, progress is slow. Therefore, it might be a long wait before we see a Chrome for iOS version using the Blink engine.
Open-source consulting firm Igalia is contributing to this project. In their latest blog post, the company revealed:
So far, we have briefly introduced the current status of the project, but there are still many features that need support. For instance, UI functionalities, print preview, downloads, text selection, request desktop site, zooming, translation, find in page, touch events, etc., are not yet implemented or do not work correctly.
Moreover, there are a large number of failed or skipped tests in unit testing, browser testing, and web testing. Ensuring these tests pass is also a focus for the future.
The Chrome iOS port based on the Blink engine is a vast and challenging project. Igalia has made contributions to this project, and although it is still in the early stages, more functionalities, infrastructure, and tools need to be ported to Blink.
Regardless, we believe we are on the right path, and eventually, Chromium-related products on iOS will replace the WebKit engine with the Blink engine.
Despite the challenges, the Chromium community is committed to providing a version based on the Blink engine for iOS. However, these efforts are complicated by Apple's policies, which are reluctant to open up the iOS browser engine outside the EU market. Therefore, browser developers must maintain two sets of engines, one with their own engine and one with the WebKit engine.
Thus, how browser developers choose is also an issue, but currently, the only mature engine developers are Google and the Mozilla Foundation, both of which are determined to port their own engines to iOS.
