It is possible to visit websites from your Apple Watch. Don’t expect Safari or web browsers that you can install on your Watch, because Apple doesn’t allow that. You can open links from your Watch so that you can still view the content.
This feature is made possible by WebKit web layout engine, a part of watchOS and available to developers. This feature allows you to open websites on the small screen. Note that the feature only works on an Apple Watch series 3 or later.
Viewing websites on an Apple Watch
To open websites on your Apple Watch, you should know that this is only possible if you have received a link in a message. This means that you can currently only open a website if you receive this link from iMessage or Mail. Tap on the link and the Apple Watch will immediately load the web page.
Smart Features in WebKit
Once the website is loaded, watchOS will immediately activate reader view and optimize the content for the Apple Watch screen size. Formatting and distracting content will be hidden and only text and images will be displayed nicely. This is especially useful for news websites, blogs or websites like ours that are built responsively. A have a website created by an experienced party is therefore of great importance.
Enable additional WebKit options in watchOS
Once a website has loaded on your Apple Watch, you can activate additional options. Tap the address bar to turn off reader view, display the previous or next page, or reload the website. Once you’ve opened a website, you can continue to tap new links on the page.
Clear Website Data on a Watch
When you visit websites, cookies and login data are also collected on the Apple Watch. This includes the history of visited pages and cookies that store the cookie settings. You can delete this data via your Apple Watch â–¸ Settings â–¸ General â–¸ Website data â–¸ Clear website data.
Problems with cookies
When you start using this feature you will notice that you sometimes experience problems with cookie walls. This is because the reader view is also activated on these pages. By tapping on the address bar you can disable this view and choose ‘Web view’, but even then you may not be able to tap on the buttons to set the cookies. This problem must be solved by the website administrator.