You Can Create Your Own Browser for IPhone Using Quiche
Safari on iPhone is fast, convenient and, admittedly, a little boring. There are plenty of third-party options in the App Store, but since Apple forces them all to use WebKit, most of them are essentially Safari. However, that didn’t stop one indie developer from trying to make something interesting.
Quiche Browser by Greg DeJay is unique, attractive, and completely customizable, right down to every button and toolbar you see on the interface. You can use this to make your browser more functional, for example by adding a button dedicated to private mode to the toolbar. Plus, it has a variety of color and layout options that you can explore to further customize your viewing experience.
How to Customize iPhone Browser Using Quiche
You can build the entire UI from scratch, but it’s better to start with one of the presets. Go to the Settings page and at the top you will find the Dashboard Gallery option. Here you have many options. You can use the traditional Safari style with the address bar at the top and buttons at the bottom and customize all parts of it. Or you can hide all the buttons behind the menu and create an incredibly minimalistic browser interface.
Once you’ve chosen your starting point, go back to Settings to customize the theme color, toolbar layout, address bar style, menu button, and context menu.
In the Address Bar option, you can add reading times for the articles you open, and in the Layout option, you can switch the buttons to whatever you want. Once you’re happy, save your interface and voila: you now have your own custom browser, built just for you.
Interesting features of the Quiche browser
Quiche has some great ideas that other browsers should take a look at. In the Settings section of the tab switcher, there is an option to sort all open websites by reading time, with the shortest reads at the top. The tab switcher is also quite customizable: you can display tabs as a list or as a large preview.
The way Quiche handles both the toolbar menu and the context menu is also very interesting. You can choose to show only the address bar, and hide all other important buttons in a long-press menu or behind the Menu button. By default, Quiche uses DuckDuckGo as its search engine, but you can switch to Google or even Kagi . The browser will even allow you to change the browser agent or disable JavaScript completely.
Quiche will also let you disable the default icon, but that can only be unlocked with a Quiche+ subscription for $0.99 per month. Considering that the entire browser is available for free, this is a good way to support the developer if you so desire.
Overall, Quiche is a nice alternative to Safari. In my opinion, this level of customization improves the overall browsing experience, and I believe that for most users it is enough to serve as the default browser. However, some may be put off by the lack of support for extensions, content blocking, and a special reading mode.