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Comment by lapcat

7 months ago

This is a bit misleading. Safari content blockers have been available on iOS since 2015. In 2021, JavaScript-based Safari web extensions were added.

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lapcat

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karel-3d  7 months ago

Trying to actually write one before, it's incredibly frustrating experience, as you still need to have some weird native glue code in in Swift/Obj-C. And everything is under-documented, as it the true Apple Experience. (I forgot the details. I can find the code on github, maybe.)

If you ask yourself why there are so little Safari extensions, this is why.

edit: I look at the code now... I needed to wrestle with BOTH cocoapods and npm, at which point I gave up

  • darrenf  7 months ago

    [EDIT to clarify: here I’m talking about writing a javascript based extension, not a content blocker]

    That’s not my experience (in the admittedly only browser extension I’ve ever written).

    After getting it working to my satisfaction in Chrome and Firefox, I created the Safari macOS/iOS versions by running

        $ xcrun safari-web-extension-converter --bundle-identifier <bundle ID> .

    in my repo. Then I opened xcode, configured the signing/capabilities, and built it. IIRC I had to create the directory for the output because xcode didn't do it itself, but once that was done I could install it to both macOS and iOS. Honestly I was surprised it was so little effort. I don’t doubt that an extension with more functionality than mine might require a jumping through a lot more hoops, but it definitely can be easy to successfully target Safari IME.