iOS 17.4 Will Drop Support for Home Screen Web Apps in the EU

Apple’s upcoming iOS 17.4 update will introduce various changes to the platform, the App Store, and the company’s Safari web browser to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act. For EU users, this update will add support for alternative app stores and web browser engines. However, one unexpected change coming with iOS 17.4 in the EU is that Apple is going to remove support for home screen web apps on the iPhone.

On iOS, Safari lets users add websites to their home screens, and these pinned web apps open without the browser UI. This can provide a native-like experience for apps and services that aren’t allowed on the App Store, such as Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now.

In a developer Q&A spotted by 9to5Mac yesterday, the company explained that the current Home Screen web apps that use the company’s WebKit engine currently benefit from the same security and privacy architecture that applies to native App Store apps. Apple specifically mentioned the “isolation of storage” and the “enforcement of system prompts to access privacy impacting capabilities on a per-site basis.”

Apple explained that allowing Home Screen web apps that use alternative browser engines on iOS 17.4 would put users at risk, unless Apple built “an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS.” With no isolation and enforcement systems for Home Screen web apps that use alternative browser engines, Apple sais that malicious apps could more easily steal user data or access users’ camera, microphone or location without their consent.

Apple argued that building that new integration architecture was “not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA and the very low user adoption of Home Screen web apps.” As a result, the company will change how Home Screen web apps work on iOS 17.4 in the EU, as these pinned web apps will now just work as bookmarks that open websites directly in Safari.

This is certainly bad news for iOS users who currently have services like Xbox Cloud Gaming pinned on their Home screens. And if Apple will finally allow game streaming apps on the App Store with iOS 17.4, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming said in an interview with The Verge yesterday that we may not see an Xbox Cloud Gaming app come to the App Store anytime soon.

“There’s not room for us to monetize Xbox Cloud Gaming on iOS,” Spencer said. “I think the proposal that Apple put forward (…) doesn’t go far enough to open up. In fact, you might even say they go the opposite direction in some way, but they definitely don’t go far enough to open up competition on the world’s largest gaming platform.”