Apple is considering changes to Safari on the iPhone Duo that would give websites access to more of the outer display, although the company has yet to settle on an approach. The core challenge is letting pages occupy the area beneath Safari's side-mounted controls without making parts of a website inaccessible.
In a Friday, October 23 WebKit post, Apple's Jen Simmons explained that an existing web setting, viewport-fit="cover", could enable this. It allows a webpage to expand into areas that would otherwise be reserved, but developers must then leave enough space around important content so the interface does not cover it. According to Simmons, many sites fail to make those allowances on every edge, and Apple's research suggests many would not handle the change correctly.
Apple is investigating whether another solution could give developers more control with less risk of obscuring content. A header's background could, for example, span the screen while its navigation links remain within the unobstructed portion.
For now, Safari 27.1 restricts webpages to the area beside the controls and uses the page's background color to fill the remaining strip. This limits the width available for content on the outer display. The arrangement stems from the screen's proportions: Apple placed controls along the side because the outer display is shorter and wider than other iPhone screens, preserving more height for apps and webpages. Separately, Safari 27.1 adds automatic two-page PDF viewing when the device is held partially folded like a book, and developers can test experimental support for detecting the folding posture behind Safari feature flags.
Source: MacRumors · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing