What is the browser used by cordova on iOS?

Question

I understand that Android uses the WebView which is based on Chromium (from version 4.4), Does cordova on iOS uses Safari or something else?

Answer 1

Safari for iOS is using WebKit2 (starting from iOS 8).

Details about WebKit2.

This seems to answer to your question.

This plugin makes Cordova use the WKWebView component instead of the default UIWebView component, and is installable only on a system with the iOS 9.0 SDK.

UIWebView is a part of WebKit.

Answer 2

cordova apps use the UIWebView component to load the apps, it's based on safari (WebKit2) but it doesn't include the Nitro javascript engine (the one safari app uses), so your cordova apps will be slower than safari app executing the same code.

Once cordova 4.0 is out, it will include "plugable webviews", that means, you will be able to choose which webview to use from any of the webviews available on the SDK (right now UIWebView and WKWebView)

If you can't wait for cordova 4.0, you can use the WKWebView plugin

WKWebView is based on safari too, but it uses the Nitro javascript engine, so it's as performant as safari app

Here you can read a full article about the comparison between UIWebView and WKWebView

The main difference is, as I mentioned before, WKWebView uses the Nitro javascript engine that is faster than the one used on the UIWebView, and WKWebview supports IndexedDB and ObjectStore ArrayBuffer.

CSS compability and rendering is the same for UIWebView, WKWebView and safari app