Most Common Mobile Safari Bug Reports

Some call Mobile Safari the hidden gem of iOS, but the exclusive iOS features are still not significant enough to make this browser as popular as competitors Mozilla and Google Chrome. And it's not just the popularity or familiarity users have developed with Firefox and Chrome that are making a lot of people considering the removal of Mobile Safari as their default browser on iPhone or iPad. More often than not, users experience bugs with Mobile Safari that aren't just causing panic among novice users but are also ruining the web browsing experience on a sleek device such as iPhone 5 or the new iPad.

Some of the following bugs (all of them reported by users) might not apply for current iOS and Mobile Safari versions, since with each new firmware release, Apple rolls out an improved browser. However, the following is a list of some of the most common Mobile Safari bug reports filed by users. Some of them attempted to fix the bugs themselves, but the recommended solution is to make sure you are using a fix released by a source with proven knowledge of Apple software errors.

Overflow scroll breaks on visibility toggle

With iOS 5, Apple introduced scrolling within an element, without the need to use Javascript iScroll. However, the solution hasn't fixed the bug completely, as fixed elements don't scroll when the overall file/document is scrolled partway down. The next Apple fix for this bug was to have users add CSS code: "-webkit-overflow-scrolling:touch". Users say it works pretty well, but it still isn't a complete fix.

Javascript scrolling breaks touch events on position-fixed objects

This is one of the weirdest bugs users have reported about Mobile Safari. Buttons placed on the right edge of a screen for page up and page down functions worked only the first time. The second time users would use those buttons, they'd stop working. William Barnes, one of the users that have reported this explains: “if I just scrolled down 100px, the button would stop working, but if I then touched a spot 100px above the button, it would register”.

Spinning loading indicator

The rollout of iOS 6 brought quite a list of bugs that several sources have attributed to Mobile Safari. TechCrunch has reported a continuous spinning loading indicator, a bug that hints the UX has suffered degradation during the activation of an AJAX request. This means that any realtime app is subjected to the spinning loading indicator bug. The bug existed before iOS 6, but the new firmware made its fix useless. No workaround is currently known for this bug.