iOS Simulator shows 'about:blank' when scheme/hostname preferences are set

[cellcrowd]

Bug Report

Problem

When adding

<preference name="scheme" value="app" />
<preference name="hostname" value="localhost" />

into the <platform name="ios"> section of config.xml, the iOS simulator shows "about:blank" page instead of "index.html" page

What is expected to happen?

App should display "index.html" page

What does actually happen?

App displays "about:blank" page

Information

This bug does not happen on real devices, only in the simulator

Command or Code

• cordova create hello com.example.hello HelloWorld
• cordova platform add ios
• cordova emulate ios --target="iPhone-8-Plus, 15.2" (shows index.html)
• added scheme/hostname preferences inside ios section as per above
• cordova emulate ios --target="iPhone-8-Plus, 15.2" (shows about:blank)

Environment, Platform, Device

iOS Simulator on Mac OS Big Sur 11.6, Mac Mini (M1, 2020) 8GB

Version information

Cordova CLI 11.0.0
Cordova iOS 6.2.0

Checklist

• I searched for existing GitHub issues
• I updated all Cordova tooling to most recent version
• I included all the necessary information above

[cellcrowd]

When running document.location = 'app://index.html' through the Safari debugger, the page loads. However, it fails to load CSS with error: Did not parse stylesheet at 'app://index.html/css/index.css' because non CSS MIME types are not allowed in strict mode.

Running document.location = 'app://localhost' does the same as above with error: Did not parse stylesheet at 'app://localhost/css/index.css' because non CSS MIME types are not allowed in strict mode.

Running document.location = 'app://' shows 'about:blank'

Running document.location = 'app://localhost/index.html' does not do anything (returns "app://localhost/index.html" = $1 in console)

[cellcrowd]

Closing the issue here in favour of the cordova-ios issue tracker, apache/cordova-ios#1215