Apple exploring fix for Safari’s cramped layout on the iPhone Duo’s outer display – 9to5Mac

In a new post on the WebKit blog highlighting what’s new in Safari 27.1, Apple’s Jen Simmons said the company is exploring ways to let websites make better use of the iPhone Duo’s outer display. Here are the details.

Apple knows Safari isn’t making full use of iPhone Duo’s outer display

One issue singled out in multiple iPhone Duo reviews (including ours) was the fact that Safari’s right-aligned controls take up a significant portion of the outer display’s limited screen space, leaving websites with an unusually narrow area to show their content.

Here’s what Chance Miller had to say about this in his review, published earlier this week:

But the awkwardness of the iPhone’s 5.4-inch outer display shows up in Safari. The web simply isn’t optimized for this form factor. I’ll talk more about this later, but the right-aligned controls on iPhone Duo eat into the usable screen real estate in Safari especially.

[…]

I can see why Apple chose the design it did for Safari on the iPhone Duo. I don’t think overlapping the controls with the website would’ve made sense. Still, scrolling in Safari is one of the best examples of something that’s better on the inner screen.

For new iPhone Duo users who have also been frustrated by this issue, Apple’s Jen Simmons shared some good news today.

In a post highlighting what’s new in Safari 27.1, including how websites adapt to the iPhone Duo’s different screen sizes and folding positions, Simmons acknowledged that websites currently can’t extend behind the controls on the device’s outer display, and said Apple is exploring ways to address that limitation.

From her post:

We would like to give web designers and developers the ability to design and use that space in more creative ways. Perhaps you want to extend your header background across the full width of the display, for example. It might seem like there’s just one obvious way to make this possible, but really there are many possibilities.

Simmons went on to explain that simply using the HTML viewport meta tag with viewport-fit="cover" to extend websites behind Safari’s controls could cause problems, because many websites don’t properly account for those areas, potentially leaving important content obscured.

Instead, she invited developers to share their ideas as Apple explores a better approach:

We are investigating if there’s a better way to accomplish the same result — something more foolproof and perhaps easier for you to use. If you have ideas, we’d love to hear them. And stay tuned.

If you’re a web developer and have ideas on how Apple could address this limitation, you can read the full WebKit post for details on how to share your feedback.

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