The iPhone Duo’s wide, short outer display creates an unusual compromise for web browsing: Safari shifts its controls to the side to preserve vertical room, but that also narrows the space available to a webpage. Apple is now exploring a way to make that reserved area more useful rather than treating it as unused space beside the site.
In Safari 27.1, webpages stop before the column occupied by the browser interface. Safari can extend a page’s background color behind the controls, but the actual page layout remains confined to a narrower content area. One possible improvement would let developers carry visual elements such as a header background across the full width of the outer display while keeping interactive content clear of Safari’s buttons.
A safer route than full-screen web layouts
The web already has a mechanism for extending a page into areas that need special handling: viewport-fit="cover". That option can allow a site to occupy more of the display, but developers must correctly account for system-interface boundaries so text, buttons, and other important elements are not obscured.
The WebKit team says many sites do not reliably handle all four display edges, making the existing approach easy to implement incorrectly. Apple is therefore considering a simpler solution and is seeking developer input. There is no announced timeline for a change, but the work highlights how browser layouts need to adapt to foldable-style proportions rather than simply scaling a conventional phone interface.
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