WebKit

WebKit

Original author(s)	Apple Inc., based on work by KDE
Developer(s)	Apple and open source contributors
Initial release	7 June 2005
Repository	github.com/WebKit/WebKit
Written in	C++ C Objective-C
Operating system	macOS iOS watchOS Windows Linux
Type	Browser engine
License	GNU LGPL v2.1 (WebCore and JavaScriptCore) BSD 2-Clause (Apple contributions)
Website	webkit.org

The WebKit project is the browser engine creating the core of Safari. Beginning as a fork of the KHTML project, WebKit was intended as a competitor to the then-popular Microsoft Internet Explorer Tasman (Mac) and Trident (Windows) engines, in addition to Mozilla, the successor to Netscape and predecessor to Firefox.

It is comprised of the following major components:

• WebKit: High-level web browser components that can be embedded in an app with ease.
• WebCore: Low-level rendering engine implementation that can be used to more closely customise WebKit behavior, forked from KHTML.
• JavaScriptCore: The JavaScript engine implementation, forked from KJS.

WebKit is a core operating system component of macOS, iOS, and their derivatives such as watchOS. Its primary purpose is to support the built-in Safari browser, which by default uses the operating system's provided WebKit components. While Safari is no longer released for Windows, WebKit continues to fully support Windows. Nightly builds of a barebones "MiniBrowser" for Windows are provided on the Buildbot. WebKit is still used by iTunes for rendering web content, such as the iTunes Store. iCloud for Windows previously used WebKit, but has switched to Microsoft Edge WebView2.

WebKit components have been heavily used by parties other than Apple:

• Google Chrome: Initial versions of Chrome were based on WebKit, paired with the Google-developed V8 JavaScript engine. Chrome forked WebKit in April 2013 to create Blink.
• Android: Until version 4.4, Android bundled a copy of WebKit for use by the Browser app, and by apps that require embedded web browser functionality (WebView). Since 4.4, following Chrome's switch to Blink, WebView no longer uses WebKit.
• GNOME Web (codename Epiphany): Uses WebKit via WebKitGTK. The WebKit official website directs people to Epiphany's preview versions as a replacement of Safari Technology Preview on Linux.
• Nokia mobile operating systems Symbian S60, Maemo, and MeeGo, and MeeGo successor Sailfish OS
• BlackBerry OS 6.0 and later
• Adobe AIR
• Amazon Kindle
• Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch
• PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5
• Tizen
• webOS

External Links

Wikipedia has an article about WebKit

• WebKit preview/nightly builds
  • Buildbot
• WebKit Bugzilla