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.
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 ☺️
Similar
Although Chrome also uses the Apple WebKit, but the user agent is different, so websites may behave differently, and the accessibility of websites very, generally speaking, using Safari on most websites are more accessible, but sometimes using chrome is more accessible, one example is the Facebook website, in recent days, Facebook has became completely in accessible using Safari on iOS, but it is accessible using chrome on iOS.
Your experience may vary depending on what websites you visit more often.
What I found out from using iOS in the past 7 to 8 years is that filling out most online forms are more accessible using Google Chrome
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
No reader
I have used Chrome on every platform and I have never seen a reader button on iOS, Android and Windows.
However, Firefox is the only accessible third-party browser that I know that has a reader mode
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.
Safari
Safari does actually have a Reader mode, you just have to go to page settings and find where it says show reader, this hides a lot of ads and a bunch of junk from other websites
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.