Web applications have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their compactness, simplicity and versatility. A lot of the web apps we use every day are basically just a customized website, so in reality they simply exist in your browser.
One advantage of web apps is that they don’t take up a lot of system storage. But this is likely to change, especially for Safari users. If you use Safari on a Mac computer, web applications will now “take up” more data storage space on the system.
Accordingly, Apple recently announced some changes to its Storage Policy that will apply to all browsers on iOS and Safari on Mac computers. Most of the changes are for developers and do not directly affect regular font users. However, there is one item that you may need to be aware of, which is how much storage the browser is free to use on the system.
Essentially, Apple says that browser and web apps added to the home screen (in the case of iOS) and the dock (in the case of macOS) are allowed to take up about 60% of disk space. If it’s just a website or web application that you visit occasionally, or are simply bookmarked, the site’s storage quota will be much less, at 20% of disk space. Previously, Safari limited web apps to about 1GB of storage, and the browser displayed a prompt to allow more storage to 200MB when needed.
Notably, the new limit is based on how much storage a device has. That said, it’s not excluded that this limit can be in the range of hundreds of gigabytes as long as your device has such a large storage capacity. These changes will be rolled out as part of upcoming operating system updates in iOS 17 and macOS 14, which are expected to be released to iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers later this year.