Sorry folks, iOS 15 disabling AMP in Safari is a bug — it'll be back

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Iphone 12 Pro Ios 15 Safari
Iphone 12 Pro Ios 15 Safari (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

What you need to know

  • A bug that prevented AMP search results in iOS 15 is being fixed by Google.
  • The bug doesn't impact other versions of iOS.

When reports began to swirl that Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) search results were no longer being displayed in Safari in iOS 15, people got excited that we might see the end of them. But no, it's a bug — and AMP will be back soon enough.

AMP search results are what you tend to see when you search for something and tap through. The result isn't always the website itself, but a Google version of it instead. It's all done for a variety of reasons including speed, but the important part is that people hate it because sharing the URL means others get the AMP result as well, not the actual webpage. It's easy to see why people were happy when they saw iOS 15's Safari wasn't being served AMP pages.

But don't get too excited — it turns out this isn't a feature but rather a bug, and Google's already working on it.

There are of course other ways to get around the AMP situation. Some of the best Safari extensions let you disable AMP entirely, overwriting Google's push towards their own pages and sending you to the proper URL instead.

The new Safari extensibility might be one of the best iPhone changes from the iOS 15 refresh yet, if only because it means I won't accidentally share an AMP page with anyone anymore!

Apple's iOS 15 update is available for download now, with iOS 15.0.1 already having been released to the public. Apple is testing iOS 15.1 with developers and those on the public beta program, too.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.