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Safari Webkit Feature Flags

On my iPhone, at

SETTINGS>SAFARI>FEATURE FLAGS>WEBKIT FEATURE FLAGS there are various things, written in Geek, some turned on, some turned off. I have looked online, including in the Apple Forum, trying to find out what these are for. All I can find are two things: 1) reference to a no-longer-included Experimental Apps menu; and 2) instructions for developers. (Note to Apple: Don't include a typical form-letter-like answer that has no relevance to my query, please. Does anybody actually read the questions, or do they all go to either AI or some person in India who has to use a script?) My first guess is that the purpose of these "flags" is to let me know if apps within various categories--which, I presume I would choose to be informed of by choosing <On>--are being experimented with and are available to try. Personally, I would never do that, as something might get screwed-up, or there might be some security risk; so, I would just turn them all off, as they would serve me no purpose. BUT, if my assumption is wrong, is there a reason why what appears to be the default settings are best, or why I might want to change them (ironically, when I clicked on the search suggestion about that, I got the same above-mentioned useless search results as when I searched "iphone webkit feature flags", nothing about which flags to switch on or off)?

iPhone 13, iOS 18

Posted on Jan 25, 2025 1:14 PM

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Posted on Jan 25, 2025 1:35 PM

First, you are not speaking to Apple here. Community members that post here are just experienced Apple product users that enjoy helping others solve their technical problems. You will not find any AI or bot use here.


To answer your question on iPhone about the settings in:

Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced > Feature Flags


The reason that those settings are burried so deeply is that they are really only intended for web and app developers to be able to test things. Those settings should never be changed by 99.999% of iPhone users. Doing so risks website incompatibilities, loss of functionality, and potential risks.


The technologies in a modern web browser change very rapidly. New features and standards are proposed all the time and web browser developers must keep up to ensure support. These new web features eventually become added to the supported features of a web browser like Safari, and old features must eventually be removed. The Feature Flags you see listed are intended for developers to be able to control these features and standards before they become defaults or after they are depreciated but before they are removed for good.


Mess with those settings at your own risk.

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Jan 25, 2025 1:35 PM in response to daevidd

First, you are not speaking to Apple here. Community members that post here are just experienced Apple product users that enjoy helping others solve their technical problems. You will not find any AI or bot use here.


To answer your question on iPhone about the settings in:

Settings > Apps > Safari > Advanced > Feature Flags


The reason that those settings are burried so deeply is that they are really only intended for web and app developers to be able to test things. Those settings should never be changed by 99.999% of iPhone users. Doing so risks website incompatibilities, loss of functionality, and potential risks.


The technologies in a modern web browser change very rapidly. New features and standards are proposed all the time and web browser developers must keep up to ensure support. These new web features eventually become added to the supported features of a web browser like Safari, and old features must eventually be removed. The Feature Flags you see listed are intended for developers to be able to control these features and standards before they become defaults or after they are depreciated but before they are removed for good.


Mess with those settings at your own risk.

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Jan 26, 2025 3:00 AM in response to FishingAddict

I will follow your advice and never touch them. The use of the term "flag" gave me the impression that they had something to do with being alerted to something--"something's going on with this feature"--so, ON would mean I wanted to know, and OFF would mean that I didn't. It sounds, however, that it has more to do with doing something with those features. "Flag", as in "flag it to be tested/used/connected", perhaps?

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Safari Webkit Feature Flags

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