Disable magnification gesture in WKWebView

I have tried setting minimumZoomScale and maximumZoomScale properties of UIScrollView to 1 or isMultipleTouchEnabled property of UIView to false or returning nil from invoking viewForZooming(in:) of UIScrollViewDelegate but none worked. In my case, after several trial and error, the following works in my case [Tested on iOS 10.3]:

class MyViewController: UIViewController {
   var webView: WKWebView?

   override viewDidLoad() {
      super.viewDidLoad()

      //...
      self.webView.scrollView.delegate = self
      //...
   }
}

extension MyViewController: UIScrollViewDelegate { 
   func scrollViewWillBeginZooming(_ scrollView: UIScrollView, with view: UIView?) {
      scrollView.pinchGestureRecognizer?.isEnabled = false
   }
}

The below answer no longer works in iOS 10 beta.

To improve accessibility on websites in Safari, users can now pinch-to-zoom even when a website sets user-scalable=no in the viewport.


WKWebView seems to respect the viewport meta tag the same way Mobile Safari does (as to be expected). So, I found injecting that tag into the DOM through javascript after a page load does the trick. I would be weary of this solution unless you know exactly what HTML is being loaded into the webview, otherwise I suspect it would have unintended consequences. In my case, I'm loading HTML strings, so I can just add it to the HTML I ship with the app.

To do it generically for any webpage:

- (void)webView:(WKWebView *)webView didCommitNavigation:(WKNavigation *)navigation {
    NSString *javascript = @"var meta = document.createElement('meta');meta.setAttribute('name', 'viewport');meta.setAttribute('content', 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no');document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(meta);";
    
    [webView evaluateJavaScript:javascript completionHandler:nil];
}

It might be wise to take a look at what kind of navigation has just been completed, since only a new page will need this javascript executed.


You can prevent your users from zooming by setting the delegate of your WKWebKit's UIScrollView and implementing viewForZooming(in:) as in the following:

class MyClass {
    let webView = WKWebView()

    init() {
        super.init()
        webView.scrollView.delegate = self
    }

    deinit() {
        // Without this, it'll crash when your MyClass instance is deinit'd
        webView.scrollView.delegate = nil
    }
}

extension MyClass: UIScrollViewDelegate {
    func viewForZooming(in scrollView: UIScrollView) -> UIView? {
        return nil
    }
}