I did a search prior to posting this but only found a comparison of these two browsers for Mac OS. I use Chrome on my Windows PC and it would be nice to have access to those same bookmarks and history on my iPhone, so I was considering switching to Chrome there too. I'm so comfortable with Safari and it works so smoothly with VoiceOver that I'm a bit hesitant. Obviously I can just download the Chrome app and give it a spin, but I'm curious if folks have been using Chrome long-term on their iOS devices and how it behaves with VoiceOver. Thanks.
By Luke, 20 August, 2022
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
Similar experience
Apple requires all iOS web browsers use WebKit, – the browser engine that powers Safari, so the browsing experience should be the same across all browsers. This means that the accessibility, or not, of websites shouldn't vary across browsers. The last time that I used Chrome on iOS, the app itself was accessible, so it using Chrome allows you to synchronise bookmarks and history, then the decision should be an easy one ☺️
Couple things I’m already missing
So far the experience is pretty comparable, as people have said. There are a couple things about Safari that I’m missing in Chrome, but perhaps there’s a way to enable them either somewhere in the settings or with extensions. Feel free to share suggestions if so.
The first is that chrome doesn’t do that clicking noise when a page is loading. I didn’t realize it until now but I’ve come to expect that. The other is there doesn’t appear to be a reader mode in chrome. I often use this to remove extraneous content so I can just focus on the text of an article. Thanks for the replies
Reader View
Hi Edward. In Safari for iOS, there's a Page Settings button to the left of the address field of the current page. One of the options in Page Settings is "Show Reader View" and this is the mode I'm talking about. Hope that helps.
installing developer and public betas
judging by comments in this thread, Chrome is compairible to Safari on iOS. however, if you want to be, or all ready, a beta tester, Safari is the only browser which can install both public beta, and developer beta profiles, in iOS.
Reader Mode
Unlike the Android and Computer versions of Chrome, there is currently no proper reading mode among the IOS/IPadOS version.
NB. I already check under
chrome://flags
for trying to enable it... No option what-so-ever.
Only Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge (Edgium), have a built-in reader mode.