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Comment by gopikrishnan | Hacker News Reader

I'm using webRTC for a video chat project that I'm developing now. I had a hard time making it work on iOS browsers and ended up supporting iOS Safari alone. Though all iOS browsers use the same WebKit, Apple still reserves a few things only for Safari I guess (maybe H264/VP8 video codec related stuff?!).

It may take some time for webRTC (or Apple) to get there, to webRTC become a solid option for p2p video communications.

If anyone wants to quickly try webRTC, check this demo https://appr.tc/ out, you know, with multiple browsers/tabs.

ps: I used "simple-peer" library and it's quite good for beginners.

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getUserMedia isn't supported by third-party browsers on iOS yet, see note 3:

https://caniuse.com/#feat=stream

The Judiciary Committee asked Apple about this last summer, see question 6:

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG...

I think it's close to landing though, need to revisit.

Sort of a tangent, but the committee asking Apple why they don’t support a specific web API is such a stark contrast from that senate panel with Zuckerberg. The Judiciary Committee seems so much more technically informed.

WebRTC mildly competes with their proprietary FaceTime URLs that, along with iMessage, "encourages" people to keep coming back into their stores. They could make it work exactly like the implementations on Windows and Linux (and the other macOS web browsers that are "required" to use WebKit) if they desired. You can still use an SDK though --as long as they allow you publish it to users.

There are native libraries available for both iOS and Android. I didn't want end-user to install any. Just to click the invitation link and start chatting.

I am developing a video chat + screen share for a school. I am looking for similar browser based application "Click to Start" without installing an app or downloading anything.

I use {reactJS,socket.io,simple-peer,nodeJS}. you can skip the reactjs. There are a lot of tutorials available for video chat apps using webrtc+socket.io. https://appr.tc/ is open-sourced but not actively maintained.

check this out: https://peer.school/

webRTC classroom app, open-sourced.

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