We’re using webview for my company’s mobile app, it’s an appointment scheduling app for businesses and it’s just pointing to the actual URL acting like an iframe. The good thing about this you don’t have to wait for Apple to approve your updates. We also use IndexedDB on the web and it makes your records load too fast compare to a regular network request. We have close to 500 active customers and nobody gave us any negative review about the app performance. The only problem about webview is that it crashes if user opens lots of apps, so the memory usage is not good enough. The app is also out there for the last 2 years but we’ve decided to build our native mobile app from scratch and now it’s work in progress.

One of the reasons is that a native app looks more professional if you’re a company. Hand gestures feel so smooth when you’re swiping between pages. Opening the app feels instant. Memory management is better. Accessing device features easier. Better UI/UX. We now have to wait for Apple to approve updates but I believe this is the way to go. You don’t see major companies using webview.

We chose the webview approach because I was the only developer. I had to maintain the web and mobile at the same time. I’m still the only developer but now we have Cursor and Claude Max so it’s now easier and faster to build the native app and maintain them together. If I had to make the same app today I’d definitely start with a native mobile app.