November 4, 2025
Passes tests, fails patience
This Month in Ladybird – October 2025
Ladybird hits a huge milestone, but readers ask: can we try it and is it safe
TLDR: Ladybird hit 90% of web tests and added speed and video sync features; fans praise Windows support and Google Maps, but threads gripe about no download, question the test score’s value, and worry it’s not memory-safe. It matters because a real Chrome alternative needs trust and a tryable build
Ladybird’s October sprint was a crowd-pleaser and a nerve-tester all in one. The indie browser engine merged 217 code changes, landed new sponsors, and crossed a big line: over 90% of the Web Platform Tests—a massive checklist of whether websites work properly—now pass. That matters because Apple looks at this to decide if non-Safari engines can run on iPhones. Fans cheered that Google Maps already works and that Windows support is in the mix. One commenter declared it the “next Opera, but fully free,” while another applauded the cross-platform push.
Then the drama kicked in. The top vibe was Where’s the download? People want an alpha, a beta—anything—now. A skeptical chorus questioned whether that 90% test score equals real-world usability, pointing out the sudden jump likely came from the test suite itself getting bigger. And the hottest take? Safety. A donor lamented it’s “not written in a modern memory-safe language,” sparking a mini flame-war of security vs. speed. Meanwhile, the team shipped very human-friendly upgrades: faster site revisits via a new disk cache, smoother video with audio perfectly in sync, pinch-to-zoom on Mac, and fresh accessibility tools to peek at how screen readers see pages. Translation: Ladybird’s flying faster—but the comments want receipts.
Key Points
- •Ladybird merged 217 PRs from 43 contributors in October 2025 and welcomed new sponsors.
- •WPT passing subtests increased by 111,431 to 1,964,649, surpassing 90% of all subtests for the first time.
- •A test suite update added 100,751 subtests, mainly due to Wasm core tests updating to Wasm 3.0.
- •Work began on a persistent HTTP disk cache; Trusted Types were added to several DOM APIs; initial XPath support via libxml2 enables htmx.
- •Media playback was unified for synchronized audio/video, added async seeking, audioTracks/videoTracks, spec-compliant fastSeek; macOS pinch-to-zoom and accessibility tree inspection in DevTools were implemented.