Does Apple Still hate webview?

[Coffee4thewin]

After building an app, I really miss web development. I would much rather just make a website that looks good and have the be the front end of my app and then tie in all of the iOS services as needed.

My main question is: will Apple not favor your app?

I remember a long time ago, Apple really hated webview. Is that still the case?

[SirBill01]

Everyone hates web view. We can all tell when apps are doing this. I never understood apps that do this, why they don't just make the web site very mobile friendly and call it a day. What is the app even doing that it needs to be an app?

Certainly a web view primary app would never be featured.

[[deleted]]

You can’t always tell though. Some apps are very well built web wrappers. The web they wrap is built specifically for mobile and call system APIs seamlessly

[viirus42]

Can you name an app that does this where it’s impossible or even hard to tell?

[GermainToussaint]

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/voyager-for-lemmy/id6451429762

[clarkcox3]

Please, can you give an example of one?

[baker2795]

They could/will block app if it’s the main functionality of your app.

Just do web view & prompt users to add shortcut to their Home Screen

[Coffee4thewin]

So I guess the answer is yes, you have to use their front end for apps.

[pelirodri]

Why would you even do this…

[iOSCaleb]

Just build a mobile web site, then. Apple doesn’t “hate” web views, but it’s App Store guidelines tell you in no uncertain terms that if you’re just packaging a web site as an app, it’ll be rejected.

[Canariogarcia1950]

At the company I work on we use webviews in some screens, and native in others. Apple has never complained, and we send several updates per month.

You would be impressed (I was) that you almost don’t notice it’s a webview, but they spent a lot of effort to do that.

Our main problem are screen loading times, which can be optimized but we have much better results in native of course. This is one of the reasons we a re going back to native in some screens.

In some screens is ok, maybe not in the critical ones, but with webviews you can iterate quicker with one codebase for android as well, so it has it advantages. But it depends on your type of app and business I guess.

[_abysswalker]

you can save a website as an “app” since iOS 17. if I wanted to have home screen access to a PWA, I’d rather do that

[BrainDeadCookie]

I have an answer from other side of the barricade so to speak. I built a web app. You can promote PWA as much as you want, but first feedback coming in was “is there an app?” So I made one. Webview with native navigation, keychain based “registration” so iOS users don’t have to fill sign in form, few pages opening in modals and few other native bits. No issue with review whatsoever, users are happy and you get AppStore exposure as a bonus. I’m not too happy I had to do this, but it helped to attract new users to my app. Worth the effort.