What is WebKit?
WebKit is Safari's rendering engine: the software that turns the code of web pages into what you see on screen. Three engines power the web: WebKit (Safari), Blink (Chrome, Edge, Brave) and Gecko (Firefox). Switching browsers therefore doesn't always mean switching engines. The topic continues in chapter 2 of my book, Vivre sans Google.
Information verified on July 13, 2026
Under every browser’s bodywork sits a rendering engine: the machinery that reads a web page’s code and draws it on screen. WebKit is Safari’s, developed by Apple and released as open source. And as with cars, very different models sometimes share the same engine.
Three engines power the entire web. WebKit in Safari. Blink in Chrome, but also in Edge, Opera and Brave, which derive from it. Gecko in Firefox, the only one built outside the giants. Switching from Chrome to Brave? You change the bodywork, not the engine. Changing browsers doesn’t always mean changing the machinery.
Why should you care? Because Blink, steered by Google, powers the overwhelming majority of browsers. That near-monoculture hands Google control over web standards: what Blink adopts becomes the norm, what it ignores stays marginal. A web with three engines is a web where someone can still say no. Firefox and Safari play that counterweight role, each in their own way.
Where it plays out: chapter 2 of the book helps you choose your next browser, the Web browsers category reviews them, and the Brave versus Firefox comparison illustrates precisely this engine choice.
This topic is chapter 2 of my book
It answers these questions, among others:
- which settings actually make a difference once the browser is installed?
- how do you handle the work computer where Chrome is required?
- and how do Safari and Edge hold up, the ones nobody ever compares?
Forthcoming 22/10/2026 from Éditions Eyrolles
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Tech jargon, translated
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