Hi, it seems that with iOS26 the system displays two entries in the screentime report for apps that use a WKWebView: one for the app itself and one for the website that was displayed in the app. We don't see this behaviour in iOS18.7.
I'm reseaching how to disable the recording for the webviews in one of our apps (written in Swift with UIKit).
The STWebpageController looked promising, especially the field suppressUsageRecording, but the whole class is poorly documented.
We initialized it with the bundle identifier of the app and set the url of the wkwebview as the url in STWebpageController. It looks a bit like this:
webView = WKWebView(frame: .zero, configuration: config)
view.addSubview(webView)
//setup STWebpageController
webpageController = STWebpageController()
do {
try webpageController!.setBundleIdentifier(bundleIdentifier)
} catch{
}
webpageController!.suppressUsageRecording = true
addChild(webpageController!)
view.addSubview(webpageController!.view)
webpageController!.view.frame = view.frame
webpageController!.didMove(toParent: self)
//load url in webView
let request = URLRequest(url: url, cachePolicy: .reloadIgnoringLocalCacheData)
webview.load(request)
webpageController?.url = request.url
This has no effect on the recorded screentime for the webview inside our app - we still see the same time for the container app and the included webview.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Heiko
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Hi, in our app we have a WKWebView with complex web content that is loaded with cachePolicy: .reloadIgnoringLocalCacheData. If the app is in the background for several hours and returns in the foreground we noticed that the system reloads the webpage, but it does so with a cachePoliy returnCacheDataElseLoad. This could break the app if older cache content is present.
To reproduce start an app in the simulator (tested with iOS 17.2), put it in the background and via activity monitor stop the processes
com.apple.Webkit.WebContent
com.apple.Webkit.networking
After foreground the reload will happen.
Two questions:
why is this reload happening after some hours in the background? We haven't seen any crash reports related to this. It mostly happens on one of our test devices (iphone13 with iOS17.2.1).
why is the webview reloading with a modified cachePolicy (returnCacheDataElseLoad)?
Our temporary fix is to detect this case in "webView:decidePolicyFor navigationAction decisionHandler", cancel the request and reload with modified cachePolicy.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Heiko
Sample code:
class ViewController: UIViewController, WKNavigationDelegate, WKUIDelegate {
var webView: WKWebView!
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
let config = WKWebViewConfiguration()
webView = WKWebView(frame: .zero, configuration: config)
webView.uiDelegate = self
webView.navigationDelegate = self
view.addSubview(webView)
let myRequest = URLRequest(url: URL(string: "https://www.apple.com")!, cachePolicy: .reloadIgnoringLocalCacheData)
print("request \(myRequest)")
webView.load(myRequest)
}
func webView(_ webView: WKWebView, decidePolicyFor navigationAction: WKNavigationAction, decisionHandler: @escaping (WKNavigationActionPolicy) -> Void) {
print("start loading \(String(describing: navigationAction.request.url)), cache:\(navigationAction.request.cachePolicy)")
decisionHandler(.allow)
}
override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()
let fullscreen = CGRect.init(x: 0, y: 0, width: view.frame.size.width, height: view.frame.size.height)
webView.frame = fullscreen
}
}