WebKit

WebKit is an open-source web browser engine originally derived from KHTML by Apple in 2001 (for Safari) and KDE's Konqueror browser. WebKit was later open-sourced and has evolved into one of the three major browser engines alongside Gecko (Firefox) and Blink (Chrome/Edge, which itself was forked from WebKit in 2013). With over 8,100 stars on its primary repository as of 2026, WebKit powers Apple Safari (macOS, iOS, iPadOS), all iOS browsers (due to Apple's WebKit requirement for third-party browsers), GNOME Web (Epiphany), and various embedded browsers in smart TVs, e-readers, and gaming consoles. WebKit consists of several major components: WebCore (the HTML/CSS layout and rendering engine, handling DOM tree construction, CSS parsing and cascade, layout calculation, and painting), JavaScriptCore (also known as SquirrelFish Extreme or Nitro, the JavaScript engine with a tiered compilation pipeline: LLInt interpreter, Baseline JIT, DFG JIT, and FTL B3 JIT for maximum performance), WebKit2 (the multi-process architecture with separate web process, network process, and UI process for stability and security isolation), WTF (Web Template Framework, the foundational C++ utility library), and platform-specific WebKit ports (WebKitGTK for Linux, WebKit WPE for embedded devices). Key features include: support for modern web standards (HTML5, CSS3 including Container Queries, Cascade Layers, and View Transitions, ES2024 JavaScript, WebAssembly, WebGL and WebGPU, WebRTC, Service Workers, Web Components), Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP for privacy-preserving cross-site tracking protection), content blockers extension API, and Reader Mode. WebKit is developed primarily in C++.