Bowser

A WebRTC browser for iOS developed in the open.

Bowser is an Open Source web browser with WebRTC support. It is built on top of OpenWebRTC and is available for both iPhone and iPad. As part of releasing Bowser as Open Source it was also re-submitted to the Apple App Store and can be downloaded for free here.

Bowser will continue to be a free app and future versions will incorporate changes made by the community. Ericsson Research will continue administrating Bowser on the App Store.

Try out WebRTC in Bowser:

If you would like to make Bowser even better, please go to GitHub and make a pull request!

Navigation

Swipe left and right on the status bar to navigate back and forth between web pages. Swipe the webpage down once to reveal the navigation bar. Swipe the webpage down again to hide it.

Navigating back using a swipe gesture.

Navigating back using a swipe gesture.

Video rendering

Mobile browsers, such as Mobile Safari on iPhone, typically displays <video> elements only in fullscreen. This severely limits the UI of your apps, especially when designing video communication apps using WebRTC. Bowser goes beyond that and allows you to fully customise and manipulate <video> elements using CSS and JavaScript.

In the example above we are switching between views when the user taps the video image.

In the example above we are switching between views when the user taps the video image.

Background

When released in October of 2012, Bowser was the world's first WebRTC-enabled browser for mobile devices. Bowser was later removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play. 

Bowser was originally developed by Ericsson Research but was released as Open Source together with OpenWebRTC