IOS Safari extensions losing connection in standalone (added to homescreen)

Question

Daniyaldehleh OP

Created Sep ’22

Replies 2

Boosts 3

Views 1.1k

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IOS Safari extensions loose connection when safari page gets saved as standalone on a mobile device.

Create a sample IOS extension that has access to a standalone website such as (https://www.instagram.com) declared in manifest.json
Write in content.js a functions that runs every 5 seconds & calls alert("checking")
Go to (https://www.instagram.com) from the IOS safari stimulation & notice how the alert is getting reported every 5 second once you give the permission or enable it on instagram.
Now add instagram.com as a homescreen & once you visit it you will realize that the alert is no longer coming despite user giving permission to run on (https://www.instagram.com).

Why important to fix? Our users at beTimeful.com want to have mobile app to make their social media less addictive for themselves and their families to live a better life. However, we can only give them what they want once this petite bug gets fixed.

Answered by Daniyaldehleh in 730456022

Appreciate the reply. @bweinstein. We've already issued couple months ago FB10020986.

By removing the captivating, we make social media less addictive so that people can still stay connected, not distracted. In other words, joining Apple's mission to improve focus/screentime. You can check out our safari extension at: Mac Store.

Our users are pleading us every day to extend our solution to mobile as that's where majority of social media distraction lies. As we can't modify a native app, the closest thing we can do is ask users to add the modified safari social media page to their homescreen which they're completely value as it still makes them still feel they're using the native app without the distraction. However, since safari extensions lose connection at standalone despite our users' intention, they can no longer live a life without distraction.

As a result, we are forced to ask the user to also allow content blockers as a workaround which makes for a poor user experience for the following reasons.

The User is confused about why he has to install two extensions to do the job of one, hence creating a logical leap.
Content ways are turned on in a completely different way than Safari Extension, the former is in iPhone’s setting the latter is in the Safari toolbar. Thereby, such poor user experience leaves the user frustrated given the simplicity a user expects from Apple’s product.
Because the user has to install two Extensions to do the job of one, this can negatively impact the battery and performance of the user’s phone.
As the name implies, content blockers only block content. Hence, we can't developer any feature aside blocking that users want. Even worse, content blockers are inefficient for blocking due to the fact that some HTML elements don’t have unique identifiers while others share IDs due to being SWA (making it impossible to make targeted blocking always work).

Boost

Answer 1

Engineer OP

Apple

Sep ’22

It's expected that extensions do not work in standalone web apps at this time.

Can you please file feedback at https://feedbackassistant.apple.com, and include some information about the type of extension you are trying to write?

2

Answer 2

Daniyaldehleh OP

Sep ’22

Accepted Answer

Appreciate the reply. @bweinstein. We've already issued couple months ago FB10020986.

By removing the captivating, we make social media less addictive so that people can still stay connected, not distracted. In other words, joining Apple's mission to improve focus/screentime. You can check out our safari extension at: Mac Store.

Our users are pleading us every day to extend our solution to mobile as that's where majority of social media distraction lies. As we can't modify a native app, the closest thing we can do is ask users to add the modified safari social media page to their homescreen which they're completely value as it still makes them still feel they're using the native app without the distraction. However, since safari extensions lose connection at standalone despite our users' intention, they can no longer live a life without distraction.

As a result, we are forced to ask the user to also allow content blockers as a workaround which makes for a poor user experience for the following reasons.

The User is confused about why he has to install two extensions to do the job of one, hence creating a logical leap.
Content ways are turned on in a completely different way than Safari Extension, the former is in iPhone’s setting the latter is in the Safari toolbar. Thereby, such poor user experience leaves the user frustrated given the simplicity a user expects from Apple’s product.
Because the user has to install two Extensions to do the job of one, this can negatively impact the battery and performance of the user’s phone.
As the name implies, content blockers only block content. Hence, we can't developer any feature aside blocking that users want. Even worse, content blockers are inefficient for blocking due to the fact that some HTML elements don’t have unique identifiers while others share IDs due to being SWA (making it impossible to make targeted blocking always work).

1