lockdown-mode

name	lockdown-mode
description	Apple Lockdown Mode restrictions and their impact on web APIs inside WKWebView/Safari/WebView. Reference when debugging or building features for lockdown-enabled devices.

Apple Lockdown Mode

Apple's Lockdown Mode is an opt-in security hardening profile that disables or restricts many web platform APIs inside Safari and WKWebView. Since this app ships inside a Capacitor WKWebView shell, every restriction that applies to Safari also applies to our app.

Platform Availability

Lockdown Mode is available on:

• iOS 16 or later (iPhone)
• iPadOS 16 or later (iPad)
• watchOS 10 or later (Apple Watch)
• macOS Ventura or later (Mac)

Additional protections are available starting in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, and macOS Sonoma.

For full details, see About Lockdown Mode on Apple Support.

Testing Baseline

This document is based on testing against iOS 18.7 / Safari 26.4 on an iPhone with Lockdown Mode enabled (April 2026). The web API restrictions documented below apply to Safari and WKWebView across all supported platforms (iOS, iPadOS, and macOS).

Blocked APIs

These APIs are completely unavailable (return undefined, null, or throw) when Lockdown Mode is active.

API	Impact	Notes
IndexedDB	Critical	indexedDB global is missing entirely. Any library that relies on IndexedDB for storage will fail (Dexie, idb, localForage with IndexedDB driver, etc.).
Service Workers	High	navigator.serviceWorker is absent. No offline caching, no background sync, no push notifications via SW.
Cache API	High	caches global is absent. Often used alongside Service Workers for offline strategies.
WebAssembly	High	WebAssembly global is undefined. Libraries compiled to WASM (e.g. libsodium-wrappers, secp256k1-wasm, SQLite WASM) will not load.
Web Locks	High	navigator.locks is absent. Cross-tab coordination patterns that depend on this will break silently.
WebRTC	High	RTCPeerConnection is absent. No peer-to-peer audio/video/data channels.
WebGL / WebGL2	Medium	All canvas getContext('webgl'*) calls return null. GPU-accelerated rendering, maps (Mapbox GL, deck.gl), and 3D are broken.
FileReader	Medium	FileReader constructor is absent. Cannot read Blob/File objects client-side (e.g. image preview before upload). Use the File constructor + URL.createObjectURL() as a workaround for previews.
SharedArrayBuffer	Medium	SharedArrayBuffer is undefined. May also require COOP/COEP headers on non-lockdown browsers, so this is often already unavailable.
Speech Synthesis	Low	window.speechSynthesis is absent. Text-to-speech features won't work.
Notifications API	Low	Notification is absent. Web push permission prompts won't appear. (Capacitor local notifications via the native plugin are unaffected.)
WebCodecs	Low	VideoDecoder / VideoEncoder are absent (AudioDecoder remains). Low-level media processing is unavailable.
Gamepad API	Low	navigator.getGamepads is absent.
OPFS	Medium	navigator.storage.getDirectory method does not exist. The navigator.storage object is present but the Origin Private File System API is stripped. SQLite-over-OPFS and any other OPFS-based storage will fail.
Web Share API	Low	navigator.share is absent. Use Capacitor's @capacitor/share plugin instead -- the native share sheet still works.

Available APIs

These APIs still work under Lockdown Mode and can be relied on.

API	Notes
File constructor	new File(...) works. You can create File/Blob objects.
FontFace API	Dynamic font loading via new FontFace() succeeds. Remote font fetches may fail with a network error (data URIs rejected).
JIT compilation	JavaScript JIT appears active (~110ms for 1M iterations). Performance is not interpreter-level degraded.
PDF viewer	navigator.pdfViewerEnabled is true. Inline <embed type="application/pdf"> works.
Cookies	navigator.cookieEnabled is true.
Credential Management	navigator.credentials is available.
localStorage / sessionStorage	Standard Web Storage APIs remain functional.

Implications for This App

Storage

• localStorage works -- our primary client-side storage (app config, relay lists, etc.) is unaffected.
• IndexedDB is gone -- if any dependency silently uses IndexedDB (e.g. some Nostr caching layers, TanStack Query persisters), it will fail. Ensure all storage paths fall back to localStorage or in-memory.
• OPFS is gone -- navigator.storage.getDirectory is stripped (the method doesn't exist, though the navigator.storage object itself remains). SQLite-over-OPFS (e.g. wa-sqlite, sql.js with OPFS backend) and any other OPFS-based persistence will not work.

Cryptography

• WebAssembly is blocked -- any WASM-based crypto libraries (secp256k1 compiled to WASM, libsodium WASM builds) will not load. Use pure-JS implementations (e.g. @noble/secp256k1, @noble/hashes) which are already what nostr-tools uses.
• WebCrypto (crypto.subtle) -- not listed as blocked in testing. The SubtleCrypto API should still be available for NIP-44 encryption via the standard Web Crypto path.

Media & Rendering

• WebGL is gone -- map libraries that require WebGL (Mapbox GL JS, Google Maps WebGL renderer) will show blank canvases. Use raster tile alternatives or static map images.
• FileReader is gone -- image/file preview workflows that use FileReader.readAsDataURL() need a workaround. Use URL.createObjectURL(file) directly for <img src> previews instead.

Communication

• WebRTC is gone -- any peer-to-peer features (voice/video calls, WebRTC data channels) are completely unavailable.
• Fetch / XMLHttpRequest -- standard network requests appear unaffected. Relay WebSocket connections should work normally.

Native Plugin Workarounds

Several blocked web APIs have Capacitor plugin equivalents that bypass WKWebView restrictions entirely:

Blocked Web API	Capacitor Alternative
Web Share	@capacitor/share (already installed)
Notifications	@capacitor/local-notifications (already installed)
File downloads	@capacitor/filesystem + share (already implemented in downloadFile.ts)

Detection

The report used a scoring heuristic (8/12 key APIs blocked = 70%) to detect Lockdown Mode. There is no official API to query Lockdown Mode status. Detection relies on probing for the absence of multiple APIs that are specifically disabled by Lockdown Mode but normally present in Safari.

Raw Diagnostic Report

For exact error messages, navigator properties, weight scores, and per-API diagnostic output, see ios-report.txt.

Guidance for Feature Decisions

When building new features, consider:

1. Always provide pure-JS fallbacks for any crypto or data-processing library that might ship a WASM build.
2. Never depend on IndexedDB or OPFS as the sole storage mechanism. Both are completely stripped. Always fall back to localStorage or in-memory stores.
3. Avoid WebGL-dependent UI for core functionality. Use it as a progressive enhancement with a CSS/Canvas 2D fallback.
4. Use Capacitor plugins for sharing, notifications, and file operations rather than web APIs -- they work on all native platforms regardless of Lockdown Mode.
5. Test on a Lockdown Mode device when shipping features that touch storage, crypto, or media APIs.