Safari for iOS 14 Wishlist

With WWDC just one week away here is my Web Developers wish list for Safari on iOS 14.

Native Image Lazy Loading

Native lazy loading of images with loading='lazy' has shipped in Chrome, Edge and Firefox already. The feature has been merged in to WebKit core already and available via Advanced Settings > Experimental Features so hopefully we’ll see this by default in iOS 14.

I requested this feature via Feedback Assistant - you can too .

Low-data Mode JavaScript API

iOS allows users to set ‘Low Data Mode’ in Network Settings. Doing so will disable automatic app updates and reduce their network data use. It’d be great if this setting was available to web developers via a JavaScript API. Android/Chrome has a Save Data mode already.

I requested this feature via Feedback Assistant - you can too .

Experimental Features Menu Improvements

In the Experimental WebKit Features menu only the title is available now, and that is often truncated and unavailable to view in full. I’d like there to be an info link to learn more about a particular feature to see the W3C spec / API details or a link to the relevant WebKit issue.

WebP Image Support

Safari is the only browser to not support the WebP image format. Apple did experiment with adding support to an iOS 10 beta a while ago , though it’s unclear why it was dropped in subsequent releases.

Dialog Element Support

Native modal dialogs would be a welcome addition. This is already available via the Experimental WebKit Features menu so I’m hopeful this will be included by standard.

Auto Translate Pages

I’ve heard rumours that built-in translation option will be included which would be a welcome addition. I’ve been using Microsoft’s Translator (which has a Safari extension) but it’d be good to have the feature built-in natively.

Blank anchor target implies rel=“noopener”

Another one that is currently available from the Experimental WebKit Features menu. This would be a welcome change for this to be standard for improved performance and security.

View Source Mode / Safari Web Inspector

There are a few simple ‘view source’ third-party apps in the App Store for this, but it’d be really nice to see a more feature-rich native option for debugging sites - even if this functionality was limited to iPadOS.