Chrome for iOS is now open source, just like the rest of the Chromium project

Chrome for iOS has been open sourced, just like the rest of the Chromium project. The code is available at the Chromium open source repository .

Developers and enthusiasts can compile the iOS version of Chrome on their own. The development on Chrome for iOS is expected to be sped up now as the wider Chromium community has access to the code. All the tests for Chrome on iOS are available and the code can be run as soon as it is checked in.

The iOS platform required some additional code that introduced complexity, which was why the Chrome for iOS was kept separately from the Chromium project for all these years. All browsers built for iOS are required to use the WebKit rendering engine. Chrome uses the Blink rendering engine on all other platforms. The requirements by Apple meant that Chrome for iOS had to include support for both WebKit as well as Blink.

Google engineers did not want to introduce the additional complexities required because of Apple constraints, in the main Chromium codebase. However, engineers have been working for years to prepare Chrome for iOS to be upstreamed to the main codebase. The changes required for consolidating the code is now complete, and the required upstreaming is now complete .

Chromium is now available as an open source project for Windows, Linux, BSD, Android and iOS. There are a number of browsers based on Chromium, including Vivaldi, Opera, Torch, Comodo Dragon and Google’s own Chrome.