Safari on the iPhone Duo’s outer screen puts its controls in the vertical bar, so when the phone is held upright, websites lose width. It’s among the Duo’s widely criticized UI choices.

Wider is a free Safari extension for the iPhone Duo that lets websites extend into the space beside Safari’s controls on the outer screen. A button in Safari’s vertical bar lets you switch freely between normal and wide, and the choice is saved for each site. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to try out what Safari would look like if Apple didn’t stop the page where it does now.

It does its job as promised, with the occasional glitch, such as a shaky screen. But even with the extension enabled, the page content that reaches into Safari’s vertical bar stays mostly hidden behind its icons.

Safari on the outer screen is a total blunder on Apple’s part. Held upright, the prime real estate is width, not height. My general rule is not to put a bar along the dimension where space is most precious. On a 16:9 screen, a horizontal bar like the Windows taskbar or the Mac Dock spends the 9, not the 16. And Apple should have gone with the traditional iOS split, bars at the top and bottom, to keep the width for websites. I’d split them only because the address bar may need the extra space. Weirder still, Safari on the inner display follows the iPadOS style, not even the traditional iOS split.