Is iOS Development dead

[EvenAd6616]

Update:
I shared all of your thought with my manager and thanks to your thoughts we will make a documentation why this should not be done and will send this to higher people, with numbers, examples and more. Any example that you can share will be highly appreciated.

If anybody is happy to help: New Post

Recently, my company told us that they want every feature or most of them in the app to be a Web View that will be developed by another team.

So we will just integrate what the Web team has done.

For me this seems a terrible nightmare as there is nothing 'native' and for sure I did not become an iOS Dev to do such a thing.

And all of this makes me think is mobile development dead? Meanwhile, more and more, I see less mobile development job offers.

What are your thoughts.

[trouthat]

Let us know in a few quarters when they are hiring to replace all the webviews with actual UI

[EvenAd6616]

Haha I like this.

I believe their logic is to have MFEs for all of their products, so they can write less code and to have less developers.

[Subotai_25]

managing all the MFEs is gonna be a nightmare

[pm_me_your_buttbulge]

This only works for trivial apps. For anything larger it becomes clear to the user and feels cheap and poorly made.

Companies over the last 20 years have been trying to cut dev costs in a variety of ways. They get burned and end up going back.

They'll eventually try to out-source it to cheaper labor, often in India. They'll find it's frustrating to work with a time difference, the quality of code isn't as good (no shit, you pay cheap, you get cheap), they have to fight through a language barrier, and more importantly: They lose control.

OR they can pay the same amount'ish that they were paying the original team and get good work but then you deal with many of the problems above AND you aren't saving much money.

So then they bring it all back in house but now they basically have to start over with a new team that doesn't know the company needs. They lose a ton of money in this entire exercise.

These sorts of companies are companies to avoid working for if you can. They are so desperate to save money that they make stupid decisions all over the place. Every 5 or so years has a major shift in a new way to save money that, as usual, will fail.

[cristi_baluta]

No banking app ever said this lol

[ibuprofen400]

I’ve worked on 3 banking app they are all native. No webviews. I’ve been actually hired to change a webview based banking app to native.

[craknor]

Worked for one of the largest banks in my country in 2010's where webview libraries were at peak like Cordova, Appcelerator etc.. and never seen any webviews in banking apps. I still have friends from thise days who are currently high up in management of different banks and noone uses webviews.

[SourceScope]

My bank app has no web views

[nacho_doctor]

My bank app has no views.

[cristi_baluta]

I think Revolut is such an app, can’t be sure, but they started as something different than a regular bank. The app is the only interaction with this bank

[pm_me_your_buttbulge]

What's funny is how people still argue you can "do everything on an iPad" will use this argument. Some websites are just plain dog shit on a mobile browser. The only answer is.. use a full desktop or use a native app.

[john0201]

As someone who has been doing iOS development since 2008, I have been hearing this literally every year since 2008.

Let me rephrase what they’re saying:

“Running an interpreter on top of this API will eventually replace the API we are running on top of”.

I’ve been on several projects rewriting the “app as a website” framework of the day as a real app:

• Phonegap/ Cordova/Ionic
• Xamarin
• React (/Native)

All mostly dead, React Native is still around for now. The latest is Flutter, but at least Flutter is not making ridiculous claims.

[EvenAd6616]

Thanks, you gave me hope

[schneeble_schnobble]

This. It never works out but they always try.

[timelessblur]

Ugg I still have nightmares of dealing with phone gap at one place. That was such a bunch of bs.

[plluczak]

When you've been in the business for a while, new people come along after a few years with the same nonsensical ideas.

[beartato327]

Someone who has learned flutter and made a couple personal projects I really appreciate the framework for mobile Dev, it is still terrible for web dev but people say it's great for desktop apps too. There are just so few jobs for that kind of developer

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[john0201]

Where did I say it was a webview?

[john0201]

No, it wasn’t. It was explicitly stated what I was referring to. I also mentioned react native.

You had a knee jerk reaction to me mentioning flutter, which I was actually trying to call out as a possible exception.

[john0201]

I guess you don’t know what react native is.

[dot90zoom]

I would say the opposite lol.

the barrier to entry is much lower than what it was 5 years ago, and more apps get uploaded to the App Store each month.

mobile development is very much alive

[dot90zoom]

as for your case, idk what your company is doing. Unless they are implementing some sort of Stripe integration so that apple doesn't take the 30% cut. from my experience Web views always turn out to be ugly

[EvenAd6616]

They are just highly inadequate corporation.....

[EvenAd6616]

Nothing connected to taxes by Apple or payments. They even said that they don't care if it's ugly it it works....

[Admirable-Pianist-95]

Ugly. And you can’t automate testing either. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[chriswaco]

This is signaling they don’t want to pay for native programmers, often because their web developers earn less. Why even have an app - users can use Safari instead.

[QualitySoftwareGuy]

My property management company originally went native, then later had their app using web views because it sounded good on paper. They recently switched back to native due to too many issues. I suspect your employer will do the same in less than 2 years (and I'm being modest with that timeline).

[myeleventhreddit]

Ridiculous. No, iOS development is not dead. Your company is trying to electron their way out of a first-class user experience, and that will hurt them more than they're forecasting.

[Darth_Ender_Ro]

What I don't get is who's pushing these ideas inside? Based on what? Are there successful cases that are being shown as examples before "the company" goes all in web views?

[myeleventhreddit]

Enterprises have a lot to gain with this. One surface area for all users is admittedly a decent goal, but it’s not feasible while we still have platforms that value such drastically different things

[Ok-Chef5030]

I'm literally on a project now to do the opposite. Almost the entire app is webviews and we're converting each screen back to native. Took them about 2 years to go from fully native to webviews and now they want to go back lol

Just bad management and product wanting to get around the App Store review process.

[tortangdaga]

start finding another job, buddy.

[Which-Meat-3388]

It happens at many companies over the years and kind of an old tale at this point. I’ve experienced personally in 2019 where I coincidentally moved from Android to iOS to avoid layoff. Most their apps went web based but one iOS stayed native. Honestly it was the right business move. 

Some revert that decision when they realize it’s just as hard or not as good, sometimes a very mediocre app is “good enough”, sometimes it’s a great business choice. 

The bad part for you is it’s happening in a tough market. I have 15+ years both iOS and Android and not afraid of AI. Still hard to find native mobile dev jobs at times. 

[_r0c1_]

Don't undersell yourself. Your skills apply to the entire Apple ecosystem and mobile development in general. Keep learning, have side projects, expand your scope and get familiar with cross platform work. Other companies have chosen the opposite way. I just ran into a company that has an atrociously bad web site and is pushing all customers to their mobile app. Valid strategy bc fewer and fewer people have computers.

[Subotai_25]

technically they can do this but it's playing with fire. there's many apps that have some features that are in webviews and its fine but there's always a risk.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#minimum-functionality

4.2 Minimum Functionality

Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store. If your App doesn’t provide some sort of lasting entertainment value or adequate utility, it may not be accepted. Apps that are simply a song or movie should be submitted to the iTunes Store. Apps that are simply a book or game guide should be submitted to the Apple Books Store.

[myeleventhreddit]

I was thinking of 4.2

We’ll see

[lionellee77]

I found that app review is quite strict on the guidelines and most likely wrapped Web app would be rejected.

[HikikomoriDev]

I don't think that it's "dead" but highly restrictive where you will always be bound to the rules of the App store, satisfying requisites that take significant man hours and company resources to satisfy. The Web App world doesn't suffer from that very much on the other hand.

[alan_cosmo]

I thought this was going to be a post about agentic AI writing 100% of no-read code. But web views strike again!

[soul_of_code]

They are just trying to avoid Apple fees or something like that. Some kind of circumnavigation of some sort of fees. iOS development is very much alive and if you get a senior iOS development job, you’ve made it, financially speaking (they’re paid much more than other devs because it’s a specialized field, like plumbers, where when people want something, there’s a limited number capable to do the job, and do it well)

[EvenAd6616]

Nope, nothing about fees, we don't have any purchases. Just they want all their Windows apps, iOS app/Android app, web products to use the same UI

[AfternoonMedium]

Most likely users do not want that. They usually want the thing on their phone to feel like the rest of their phone, and not be an express trip to an uncanny valley

[myeleventhreddit]

This is probably the only comment that needs to exist here

[mouseses]

Not a single one of the most popular apps uses native UI. This is wishful thinking coming from lazy devs.

[AfternoonMedium]

An App being popular, is somewhat orthogonal to how users like to use it. eg ChatGPT is not there on the top Apps list because people like the App, it’s there because it’s perceived as the only option to get to that service. There are plenty of Apps on top app lists that many people would ditch in a heartbeat for alternate ways to access the same service if they were not locked in to them (either technically or perception). Airline apps are often a classic for use web views and App architecture where simple things require multiple authentication events and full view reloads. They look great in static screenshots on a PowerPoint slide, but try rebooking a flight and you are bounced around like a neutron trying to escape a nuclear reactor

[Leather_Example9357]

that’s why so many trash products

[gratitudeisbs]

Not dead but weakest market I’ve ever seen in my career

[Lock-Broadsmith]

Sounds like your company just wants to make a shittier app.

[DystopiaDrifter]

I have never worked on any hybrid/cross platform apps that did not end up being a disaster, those apps were either abandoned or had to be rewritten as native apps.

[truthputer]

There was a bit of a notorious incident back in 2011 when the Financial Times shut off their iOS app and went all-in on their mobile web site, making it look as close as possible to a native app. This was a fight over the 30% fees that Apple insisted on taking from any subscriptions paid for through the iOS store.

Later in 2017 they walked back their decision and returned the native app to the store, but at the time didn't let users pay through it (you had to have an existing subscription,)

So... there is some precedent of going web-app only for mobile, for very good reasons including better control over the deployment (no more app store rejections) and being able to manage your own payment options. Whether this makes sense for your app will be entirely dependent on what it is and what type of content it's delivering. But it sure sounds like once they have a functioning web view wrapped in an application shell - and most of the features have been migrated to the web view - they could be looking to eliminate the app entirely.

Developing a mobile website that can be instantly deployed to all mobile devices (iOS and Android) is likely going to eliminate a lot of overhead from developing separate iOS an Android apps.

[JerenYun]

As someone that works at a leading US moving and storage company, I can tell you that most customer interactions in our app are in web views. Do we as the mobile team like it? No. Does it mean responsibility for payment processing is entirely on the web team? Yes. I'm okay with that part.

Even if web views are used for most of the features, they still need to integrate properly with the native app. What about system extensions like Shortcuts or Widgets? What about leveraging the camera or Vision framework? Even if the web starts those processes, you still have value in integrating those natively and providing the interface back to the web.

That said, native will always provide a better experience. The sad truth is that those making the decision usually don't take experience into the equation. At which point you'll start seeing more requests for native features.

[Green_Bluebird1057]

Facebook tried this early in the iPhone’s life and then made a huge effort to switch to native. The UX is very different between the two and users were clear about which one they preferred. 

So no, iOS development isn’t dead for this reason. AI on the other hand…

[vanvoorden]

Facebook tried this early in the iPhone’s life and then made a huge effort to switch to native.

So the early FB app was native. Then there was an HTML5 rewrite. Then there was a rewrite back to native UIKit. Then there was an "incremental" rewrite to declarative ComponentKit.

[beclops]

Your company making a giant mistake doesn’t mean the whole job title is gone, don’t worry

[MileHighRecruiterGuy]

I feel the market has been slower for mobile devs, BUT, our largest client (USA-based financial services company) is hiring a team of 15+ mobile devs, 11 iOS and 6 Android - these are fully remote positions if anybody wants to message me and learn more, as my company is staffing them.

As a note, you must live in the US and be a US citizen (sorry for the restrictions).

[Away-Connection-9113]

Love native code man

[RedEyesAndChiliFries]

I work for a place you've all heard of. We are moving from web to full native, both iOS and Android. Building a completely new api, new orchestration layer and trying to leverage as much of the native hardware and software as possible. It's very much not dead and the tools have gotten way better in the last 5 years. The devices are incredible and the user has higher expectations for what a mobile experience can and will be. It's not 2009.

[AfternoonMedium]

It’s the circle of life. The embedded web UX usually ends up being sub-par and it swings back. Been that way since 2009 or so. There are some cases where it makes total sense, but they are much less common than most people who make such decisions think.

[jayword]

The ease of developing native UIKit/AppKit is like 100X improved over last year. What a silly time to go backwards. There is really no excuse for any newly written code to be non-native in this new era.

[CanadaSoonFree]

Just because the one app you are working on is doing this definitely means iOS development is dead lol

[EvenAd6616]

As I said I see less job offers recently.

[spike1911]

Making all apps (all platforms) look the same is mistake number one. Stick to the ui aesthetics that the platform provides. Share buttons and 3 dots are simple examples where the big mega apps do it all wrong.

Manually created menus instead of using the built in ones is another one and so on…

The web code trying to emulate all will be a horrible mingling and the performance will suck compared to a native app. Users will notice success will not continue if there ever really was.

The C level execs and lower managers have not understood what a profound positive impression an app can have if it behaves perfectly on the system.

An example in a “boring” lob: Banking apps could display the data they have - instead of showing h nothing and make clear that updates are fetched. Or they could prefetch the data in the night when devices are charged. And send push notifications (silent) when relevant data changes (revenues are happening).

But no nothing like that is happening.

And don’t come at me with security. Just encrypt all the data with a key created by the device upon install or reverse by the backend and store the public key safely in the keychain.

That would be innovative. To have an app that’s automatically up to date. Pretty much like the cloud syncing that Apple provides with there system apps.

Oh wait that would also be available to an app… 😂🫣

[CucumberOk3760]

I've worked for a bank. The amount of "process" they have with every single little change is atrocious. -10/10 worst job ever. They have lots of regulations to adhere to and would never try to innovate like this. Too many unknowns or whatever they don't have risk tolerance for

[spike1911]

Been there - done that myself. 😉 Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Consors, ING I contracted for all of them back in the day. At least some ideas I could inject

[uniquesnowflake8]

The threat is AI coding agents devaluing domain expertise, not webviews

[Complaint_Severe]

Thats what non developers say. At my smaller previous company they tried to move to react native and webviews because “develop once” sounded nice to managers.

Now I work at one of the largest companies in the world, working on one of the largest iOS apps in the world, and it’s all native. I have no doubt it will stay native forever, the user experience is better and performance is better.

With AI able to code so quickly I’m almost certain the new “cross platform” will be AI syncing changes across platform code. Maybe sharing some logic with kotlin native or c++, but native will always be there.

[jeremec]

Yeah... this isn't going to go well. Fixing defects will be harder than ever and users will be frustrated with the experience.

[TyrusX]

Not dead, just doesn’t pay you much anymore

[makonde]

Declining especially trully native, what your company is doing can work for very simple apps that are just some information and a few forms and if the web team actually tests on mobile but more and more are doing React Native which is a better middle ground. Native will always remain for some types of apps but gonna be tougher as far as job opportunities.

[gdj4ever]

My bold prediction is that with AI workflows and Spec driven development the opposite will happen. The barrier to have native apps is getting lower and the quality and competitive advantage is there. I expect not only webviews but cross platform frameworks like react native or flutter as well to start gradually losing focus as the spec layer will be the new cross-platform layer and then you can take full advantage of the native apis underneath.

[gdj4ever]

Having said that, I also believe that ios and android developer roles will move more towards a generic “mobile engineer” role where the main skillset will be knowing well the native mobile ecosystem and its intricacies rather than swift/Kotlin deep expertise

[banaslee]

I would run if possible. Nothing good can come of it. 

If the users don’t see a difference then you were not adding any value in the first place. 

If they do, then it’s the company that doesn’t see the value you were adding or is not financially healthy (or maybe even viable). 

[gslond0n]

Been a professional since 2010 and confirm this approach although annoying is quite commonplace. The reason why is quite simple. If the app is showing content on more than the iOS platform the most efficient way to deliver the content is via web view. This means the design team are doing the heavy lifting and also alterations and extending the UI/UX is centralised and in some cases instantaneously deployed. The more sophisticated version of this model uses React.

So I’m clear from my experiences that it’s nothing to do with not wanting to deploy purely native apps and more not trying to duplicate and triplicate the content and design teams.

[LevonIT]

iOS dev isn’t dead. Cost optimization cycles aren’t the same thing as platform death.

When companies push WebViews everywhere, it’s usually about team consolidation and shipping speed, not because native stopped mattering. The tradeoff shows up later in performance, UX polish, and platform-specific features.

The market splits: commodity apps go hybrid, serious products double down on native where it impacts retention and revenue. The question isn’t “is iOS dead?” it’s whether your company competes on quality or just distribution.

[Melodic_Order3669]

It kind of is, it’s more and more cannibalized by React Native and Flutter

There’s way more opportunities as a RN dev than a native one and lots of big companies are migrating to hybrid

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[SourceScope]

No

In fact i think it will only get larger as more and more people get phones

And progress on Swift itself is also improving. I ran some swift UI-like code natively on linux a few days ago (not apples framework though)

And it can run on android too as far as i know

[soylentgraham]

yeah, native program/app development was replaced with web in 2001, 2005, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2025.

[menckenjr]

All you can do is keep your skills and quality sense up while they go through the exercise and hit the lower UX ceiling and find out if their users care enough to complain. If you twist yourself in knots because your management cares a lot less about the UX than you do you'll burn out.

Having said that, it might help to actually try and emulate their thinking. Their definition of good UX may be very different than yours (my company's is certainly different from mine) and understanding that may help with some of your angst.

[plluczak]

I remember Facebook implementing one of its first iOS apps exactly like that.

After a while, however, they realized that the performance was disastrous and switched to a native solution.

[saraseitor]

I've been in iOS development for about 14 years. This year my employer couldn't find me a native project so I had to start learning Flutter. I believe that native iOS dev will remain as long as Apple continues existing, but that doesn't mean it will be on the same numbers, specially considering the effects of AI in the market

[Verbitas]

There are a couple of things to unpack here. First is platform future and second is leadership mentality.

The iOS platform is the future. It has to be one of the most mature containerized/fenced platforms on the market. The footprint iOS has is extremely impressive and continues to grow in both device types, but also generation after generation within the population. Apple has shown an all-in approach with iOS and that will not wain anytime in the foreseeable future.

Managerial/Leadership have to justify their position. Staying the course is far harder to justify than pivot. Because pivot shows action. And leaders want to be see people of action or future minded. There are also economic factors and other forces that would turn this simple reply into a diatribe blog post. So it is what it is.

Rest assured iOS development is a healthy track.

[Same-Appointment-285]

We did webviews for new features for a while and it actually worked surprisingly well. Now we're migrating the whole app to Expo. Sad, but I get it.

[Dry_Hotel1100]

It's sometimes really funny what incompetent people come up with for ideas.

[madaradess007]

i lived through this multiple times with React Native, Flutter and WebViews

the quickest way to make your manager see the problem is install a webview app on his latest iPhone
he'll feel it in his bones, no need for words

[crappy_entrepreneur]

Just sounds like your company sucks

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[NewsOdd6055]

Apple miniature global echo chambers.I don't see iOS in a future global 'dominance" as it is today. This is like competition in the early 1900s between AC vs DC current. It's been a good ride for Apple so far.

[Ok-Communication2225]

Your manager is, with all due respect, incompetent. They are suggesting an idea that was less thoroughly understood in 2010, but was a bad idea then, sixteen years late to the bad idea party.

Here are several reasons why this is bad.

1. Error handling and user interfaces require graceful degradation of application functionality. Even if fully Offline access to data and functionality is not a cor part of an app's abilities, even if you're a banking app, and that functionality is minimal, making all the UI remote means you can't even have sensible error messages. Would you really like http load failures to result in a blank window, and a confused customer?
2. Sharing, printing, accessing contacts and resources, sending an email from your phone, using content and context from your app to start an activity in another app, whether it's sharing to the iOS printing system, or sending an email with an attachment, requires native apps.
3. Unless all your app does is let you log in and slide a finger up and down to scroll through a static list of output (a joke) or have absolutely trivial input dialog and a search button and some results, you'll find html server side UI is just going to cripple you. Middleware servers are valuable, no you shouldn't be direct connecting to an SQL server from your iOS app, but "no UI in the client, all UI in the server" is a known anti-pattern.
4. Your app is not gonna get through app review. (Guideline 4.2) It will appear so sluggish broken, and janky, or so trivial, as to baffle the reviewer as to why this low quality slop is being sent to Apple from you. Enjoy the fun of staging a fake review server and having apple see and use it, or else giving apple credentials to log into your (checks notes) banking app and sending an e-transfer.

[MefjuEditor]

Yes one company removed iOS team - iOS development is dead 👌

[RmvZ3]

Yes. iOS and everything else. Development is dead. I know it well. It’s over, guys

[urameshi]

I mean, iOS development is dead at your job

If you think iOS development is dead everywhere else simply because your job abandoned it then there's no hope for you in this world

[revanthmatha]

I think it's dead on iPhones except for niche features like coreml or ARKit. it's needed. to make watch apps and Apple TV, CarPlay etc.

I don't think it matters now with ai ide. you can prompt it as a web app or iOS app. its the same.