iOS network activity indicator keeps spinning in web app added to home screen

Asked 28/1, 2013 at 22:58 Answered 6/2, 2013 at 13:10

Solved ios web-applications iphone-web-app iphone-standalone-web-app

2nd update, March 2014: Apple closed the bug saying they don't have enough information, but my project is a big PHP application that I can't (and won't) fully send to Apple for them to reproduce this problem. If anyone has a shareable, simple, pure HTML app that exhibits this problem as well, please let me know and I'll submit it to re-open the bug hoping they'll look into it.

1st update: as more users are reporting this issue and nobody has a clue, I have filed a bug report at Apple. If anything useful comes out of that which is not under NDA, I will post it here.

After installing a (jQuery Mobile) web app I am developing to the home screen of my iOS 6 device (iPhone 5), the network activity indicator in the status bar at the top of the screen keeps spinning even after the page is loaded completely. The behavior shows only when the page is opened through the web app; surfing to the same page in Safari on the same device doesn't show the infinitely spinning activity indicator.

Removing all AJAX calls and page content doesn't make a difference; the problem persists even when the web app consists only of an empty page like this:

<html>
    <head></head>
    <body><br/></body>
</html>

Urea answered 28/1, 2013 at 22:58 Comment(0)

The issue was solved by deleting the web app from the home screen, surfing to the page in Safari and re-adding it to the home screen as a new web app.

My guess is that the problem lies in the meta data that iOS stores at the moment a web app is added to the home screen (such as the values in the apple-mobile-web-app-capable and apple-touch-startup-image meta tags).

At least some of that information does not seem to get refreshed when accessing the page as a web app, even when it starts serving completely different content (such as the empty page shown in the question). I know this is true for the apple-mobile-web-app-capable meta tag; adding that tag to a site that has already been installed to the home screen does not suddenly make it a native-looking web app; the tag has to be present at the moment of adding the web app to the home screen.

I think I must have installed the initial web app at a stage of development where the page referred to a non-existent resource (such as an image, CSS or JS file), resulting in a web app that keeps looking for non-existent content even though the current web page is no longer referring to it, possibly explaining the infinite activity indicator behavior.

I am not certain that that is the cause, but it does seem the most likely explanation for this issue.

If you encounter this; check that all resources your page refers to exist, then delete and re-add the web app to the screen to see if it fixes the issue.

Urea answered 28/1, 2013 at 22:58 Comment(2)

Definitely that was the answer. I think that your conclusions are the point. Thanks for replying, you should tick your answer as correct, it solved my problem. – Buster 13/6, 2013 at 13:14

Yes, but as Kenneth Bernholm indicates, the issue reoccurs after some time, so deleting and reinstalling seems only a temporary fix. Seems like a bug on Apple's side. – Urea 19/6, 2013 at 12:42

I have the exact same issue, and it goes away when I remove the bookmark from the homescreen. But the activity indicator starts spinning again after the webapp has been used for some time.

I don't see any failed requests in Apaches access log during initial load, and no requests appears when the activity indicator starts spinning, so I don't think the problem is about a non-existent resource.

However, I see in the access log that iOS Safari insists on requesting a whole batch of Apple-specific files such as apple-startup-image and apple-startup-icon when in full screen mode. This is just like how Google Chrome insists on requesting favicon.ico (sigh!). Sadly, when I satisfy Safaris thirst for apple-files it doesn't stop the spinning disc :-(

I have had the Mac OSX web inspector enabled for my webapp and it registers no network activity or other issues whatsoever.

In the Apple manual (http://support.apple.com/manuals/) page 12 for the iPad it states that the activity indicator is for "network and other activity". It doesn't say that Safari uses the indicator for anything else but network activity, but maybe it's a hint.

For the time being, I have come the temporary and unsatisfying conclusion that it's an iOS issue that's beyond web developer control. I'll keep hacking at it and post any new findings here. Perhaps together we can uncover the mystery :-)

Underquote answered 6/2, 2013 at 13:10 Comment(3)

Don't suppose you found anything? We've had the same problem for awhile now. We're using jQuery Mobile app (for what difference it makes). – Geoff 16/5, 2013 at 14:20

Yes, I'm also using jQuery Mobile. Is anyone who is not using jQuery Mobile experiencing this issue? – Urea 18/3, 2014 at 19:28

Same issue here. Frustrating. Angular/Firebase WebApp – Culmination 21/3, 2014 at 0:24

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