Every time you open Safari, you’re using an open-source project.
It’s called WebKit.
Many people think Safari is simply a browser Apple built, but the core that actually displays pages, renders animations and runs JavaScript is the WebKit browser engine.
WebKit was born in 2001 and went on to become key infrastructure in Apple’s ecosystem.
It handles:
How web pages are displayed
How CSS animations run
How JavaScript executes
How web content talks to the system
Every web page you see has to be parsed by a browser engine.
Chrome uses Blink.
Firefox uses Gecko.
And Safari uses WebKit.
Here’s the interesting part:
WebKit is open source.
Developers all over the world can read the code and contribute improvements.
It doesn’t just shape Safari; it once shaped a huge number of mobile browsers too.
The early Android browser and many other mobile browsers were based on WebKit.
Why would Apple open-source WebKit?
Because a browser engine is infrastructure for the modern internet.
A great browser engine needs lots of developers testing, optimizing and improving it together.
Today WebKit is still a core technical foundation of Apple’s ecosystem.
Browsing, shopping, searching, watching videos: it’s probably behind all of it.
GitHub:
https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit
