This behavior (as far as I can tell) has broken the Expensify iOS app for us at work. We have a conditional access policy that requires a “compliant” device to succeed the SSO login. However, only the iOS Edge browser can prove compliance and Expensify refuses to hand over that login process to the Edge browser preferring to use its own built-in browser. So login fail and as far as I can tell there is nothing we can do about it except for exempt that app from the conditional access policies.
The reason Expensify does that is because they want/need access to the cookies from the login flow. The in app browser provides the hosting application access to those, but they can't access Safari's cookiejar. The modern way of doing it is to put the login in Safari (or iOS's dedicated "in app browser for logins") and then redirect to something like expensify://login_complete?token=xxxxxx, which pops back over to the app. This is mostly tech debt on Expensify's part, but it might not solve the Edge vs. Safari issue.
I wonder what iOS Edge does which iOS Safari doesn't do, considering both are just UIs over WebKit...
Not that it matters, it's still an excellent example of stuff not working because links don't work as links anymore.
> I wonder what iOS Edge does which iOS Safari doesn't do
Being a "Managed App" through MDM/Intune. Typically it's used when installing corporate apps in a BYOD scenario. The managed apps are isolated from information sharing with unmanaged apps, e.g. policies can be applied preventing copy/paste, access to Files.app, etc. It (and it's isolated storage) can also be remote wiped without nuking the whole device. Edge.app still uses the Safari rendering engine, etc. like is generally the case with 3rd party browsers on iOS.
You can't do this with Safari.app unless the whole device is managed, which doesn't work well for BYOD.
We have this policy at work and it’s infuriating. I had to install edge once to access some work resource and immediately uninstalled it. I can’t even access our GitHub without it, even through the official app.
Maybe what breaks that process is what Edge does not do and Safari does. There is more to a browser than the rendering engine. Furthermore, does Safari still uses an optimized JS engine that the other browsers cannot use?
> I wonder what iOS Edge does which iOS Safari doesn't do
I don’t know whether that’s right, but I read “We have a conditional access policy that requires a “compliant” device to succeed the SSO login. However, only the iOS Edge browser can prove compliance” as “our access policy does not allow logging in from Safari”. If that’s true, it’s not something Edge or Safari does or doesn’t do.
> I wonder what iOS Edge does which iOS Safari doesn't do, considering both are just UIs over WebKit...
"just" is not an appropriate word here. There's a ton of functionality in the native UI and non-WebKit code.