Here’s a rewritten version of the article:
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The other day, I was chatting with Andy Clarke about an article he’s planning to write on SVG animations.
“I’ve come across a few things saying SMIL might be a dead end,” he said. “What do you think?”
That’s been my impression, too. Sarah Drasner offered a great overview of the situation back in 2017, noting:
“Unfortunately, support for SMIL is waning in WebKit, and has never (nor will likely ever) exist for Microsoft’s IE or Edge browsers.”
At the time, Chrome also signaled its intent to deprecate SMIL, pointing to ongoing efforts to enable SVG animation using CSS instead. MDN even updated its documentation to include a deprecation warning, citing the same discussion thread.
But here’s the twist: Chrome never actually deprecated SMIL. In fact, a 2023 update in that same Chromium thread confirms it’s still supported. And with Microsoft Edge now running on Chromium, it behaves much like Chrome in this regard. Meanwhile, WebKit browsers appear to fully support SMIL as well.
According to data from Can I Use, SMIL has solid support across modern browsers:
Desktop Support:
– Chrome: Supported since version 5
– Firefox: Supported since version 4
– IE: Partial support in version 11 (with polyfills)
– Edge: Supported since version 79 (Chromium-based)
– Safari: Supported since version 6
Mobile/Tablet Support:
– Android Chrome: Supported since version 134
– Android Firefox: Supported since version 136
– Android Browser: Supported since version 3
– iOS Safari: Supported since version 6.0–6.1
So, is SMIL dead? Not quite. While it may not be the go-to solution anymore—especially with powerful alternatives available in CSS and JavaScript—it’s still hanging on. It might not be thriving, but it’s certainly not obsolete either.
