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Respected friends and acquaintances, initial-scale is dead! We are freed of its tyranny. You no longer need to include it in your HTML head. It is an obsolete part of your head's meta viewport declaration. The details: vale.rocks/micros/20260... #WebDev #HTML

vale.rocksYou Don't Need Initial-Scale In Your HTML - 2 Sept 2026 13:50 UTC

romainmenke

@romainmenke.bsky.social

2 Sept

Do you have any details on the exact version of iOS when this became redundant? Might not be dead for everyone 😅

Vale

@vale.rocks

2 Sept

I just tested on an iPad running iOS 10. Seemed to handle it fine without initial-scale. I'd suggest it changed in iOS 9 when Safari's view controller was exposed to apps.

romainmenke

@romainmenke.bsky.social

2 Sept

Do you have a hosted test? I can try it through browserstack.

Vale

@vale.rocks

@quirksmode.org has one at quirksmode.org/m/tests/meta.... I did just find an old iPod Touch running iOS 9.3.5 however. It scales the page up when the orientation changed. Evidently it wasn't iOS 9 with which it changed then.

quirksmode.orgMeta viewport test

2/9/26, 3:01 pm0 reposts0 likes

romainmenke

@romainmenke.bsky.social

2 Sept

Ugh, browserstack seems to have dropped support for a bunch of versions for real devices. I don't think the simulator can be used to test this. Would be nice to figure this out so people feel safe remove this :)

Vale

@vale.rocks

2 Sept

Addendum: It seems with very limited testing that it is fine on iOS 9.3.5 and higher assuming you've correctly applied -webkit-text-size-adjust and are not an idiot. Whoops.