Build renders a white page on iOS 16

🌵 Needle Engine
1

Our build does not work on iOS 16, so I was checking your SceneSwitcher samples to see if there might be something wrong on our end.

While testing, I found that one of your samples has the same issue on iOS 16. When opening it in an iOS 16 browser, it only shows a white page and the following error appears in the browser console:

SyntaxError: Unexpected token '{'
(anonymous) @ needle-engine.extras.BaqsiD6W.js:81

Sample:
https://multiplescenes_sceneswitcher-zubcksz1x4mwl.needle.run/?scene=Scene1

2

Hey Ashok, the SyntaxError: Unexpected token '{' on iOS 16 strongly points to modern JavaScript syntax (e.g., optional chaining, nullish coalescing) that Safari 16’s JS engine doesn’t support. Needle Engine’s CDN bundles may be transpiled to ES6+ by default, which iOS 16 chokes on.

First check: what Needle Engine version are you using? If it’s 5.x, that should support iOS 16 — but double-check your deployment is using the same version that works on other devices. The sample you linked might be on a newer alpha (6.0) that dropped ES5 support.

Quick fix: if you’re building from source, add a transpilation step to ES5 (Babel with iOS 16 target). If you’re using the CDN-only approach, try deploying from a fresh project at engine.needle.tools/new with the latest stable version (currently 5.1.x) to see if it works.

If that doesn’t help, share your deployed URL so we can inspect the actual JS being served — that’ll narrow down whether it’s a transpilation issue or a missing polyfill.

Sources: Needle Engine Docs (61%), Needle Engine Docs (61%)

4 replies left
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3

Every sample that has Blender involved is failing on iOS 16 and below.

  1. Collaborative Sandbox (Blender) | Needle Engine
  2. Blender Physics Playground | Needle Engine
4

Hi, I was able to reproduce the issue. We’ll try to take a look.

Please note though, iOS 16 has <1% worldwide usage and is rather outdated by now… is this a customer device, or your own testing device?

5

It was reported to us by QA team. I guess they use browerstack for testing

6

Thanks for the additional info. Can you please tell us which Needle and vite version you’re using for your builds that fail on iOS 16?

7

“@needle-tools/engine”: “4.9.3”,

“vite”: “<= 4.3.9”,

“@needle-tools/engine”: “6.0.0-alpha”,

“vite”: “^8.0.1”,

These are the versions we used so far and confirmed to have the issue.

8

Thanks, can you please check actual package-lock for what versions you’re using?
<=4.3.9 and ^8.0.1 are not specific enough.

Have you tested Needle Engine 5.1.12 (the latest stable release) with Vite 8? As usual we’re not recommending to use an alpha release for production.

9 
"node_modules/vite": {
      "version": "8.0.1",
      "resolved": "https://registry.npmjs.org/vite/-/vite-8.0.1.tgz",
      "integrity": "sha512-wt+Z2qIhfFt85uiyRt5LPU4oVEJBXj8hZNWKeqFG4gRG/0RaRGJ7njQCwzFVjO+v4+Ipmf5CY7VdmZRAYYBPHw==",
      "dev": true,
      "license": "MIT",
      "dependencies": {
        "lightningcss": "^1.32.0",
        "picomatch": "^4.0.3",
        "postcss": "^8.5.8",
        "rolldown": "1.0.0-rc.10",
        "tinyglobby": "^0.2.15"
      },
      "bin": {
        "vite": "bin/vite.js"
      },
      "engines": {
        "node": "^20.19.0 || >=22.12.0"
      },
      "funding": {
        "url": "https://github.com/vitejs/vite?sponsor=1"
      },
      "optionalDependencies": {
        "fsevents": "~2.3.3"
      },
      "peerDependencies": {
        "@types/node": "^20.19.0 || >=22.12.0",
        "@vitejs/devtools": "^0.1.0",
        "esbuild": "^0.27.0",
        "jiti": ">=1.21.0",
        "less": "^4.0.0",
        "sass": "^1.70.0",
        "sass-embedded": "^1.70.0",
        "stylus": ">=0.54.8",
        "sugarss": "^5.0.0",
        "terser": "^5.16.0",
        "tsx": "^4.8.1",
        "yaml": "^2.4.2"
      },
      "peerDependenciesMeta": {
        "@types/node": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "@vitejs/devtools": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "esbuild": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "jiti": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "less": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "sass": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "sass-embedded": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "stylus": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "sugarss": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "terser": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "tsx": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "yaml": {
          "optional": true
        }
      }
    },
"node_modules/vite": {
      "version": "4.3.9",
      "dev": true,
      "license": "MIT",
      "dependencies": {
        "esbuild": "^0.17.5",
        "postcss": "^8.4.23",
        "rollup": "^3.21.0"
      },
      "bin": {
        "vite": "bin/vite.js"
      },
      "engines": {
        "node": "^14.18.0 || >=16.0.0"
      },
      "optionalDependencies": {
        "fsevents": "~2.3.2"
      },
      "peerDependencies": {
        "@types/node": ">= 14",
        "less": "*",
        "sass": "*",
        "stylus": "*",
        "sugarss": "*",
        "terser": "^5.4.0"
      },
      "peerDependenciesMeta": {
        "@types/node": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "less": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "sass": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "stylus": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "sugarss": {
          "optional": true
        },
        "terser": {
          "optional": true
        }
      }
    },

This one is still in internal testing stages. So we thought by the time it would go production we might have stable release with v6. I remember the bug reproduced on a stable v5 as well. Will try with 5.1.12 as well