Connection lost with the iOS device in webviews

[asmayonis1]

• connect iOS device , interact with application
• click on google login for example, once a new webview loading
• the device not interactive or detect the webview

assumption

• maestro-ios-device using maestro port: 6001
• webview is using different port

[omnarayan]

Thanks for reporting this @asmayonis1!

Root Cause

This is a known iOS platform limitation, not a bug in maestro-ios-device. The issue occurs because:

1. On iOS, when a WebView (WKWebView, SFSafariViewController, or ASWebAuthenticationSession) opens, the XCUITest framework can only see the native accessibility tree, not the DOM content inside the WebView.

2. Starting with iOS 26, Apple moved Safari WebViews to a separate service container (com.apple.SafariViewService), making them completely invisible to the standard view hierarchy.

This affects both simulators and physical devices equally.

Good News - Upstream Fix Available

The upstream Maestro project just merged a fix for this 2 days ago:

Reference	Link
PR	mobile-dev-inc/Maestro#2872
Issue	mobile-dev-inc/Maestro#2735

The fix adds a getSafariWebViewHierarchy() function in ViewHierarchyHandler.swift that:

• Detects iOS 26+ and checks for running SafariViewService
• Fetches the WebView hierarchy from the separate service container
• Merges it with the main app hierarchy

Next Steps

We will be porting this fix to maestro-ios-device.

Workarounds in the meantime:

1. Coordinate-based taps for known element positions:

   - tapOn:
       point: "50%,40%"
   

2. Wait for WebView to close, then continue with native elements:

• extendedWaitUntil:
  visible: "Welcome back"
  timeout: 30000

3. Use deep links to bypass OAuth WebViews when possible

Will update this issue once the fix is incorporated.

[omnarayan]

@asmayonis1 – the fix has been merged. Please try it out. You’ll need to run the curl command to fetch the latest JARs and the iOS runner.

[omnarayan]

@asmayonis1 can we close it ?