<meta name="viewport">: initial-scale=1.0 is not useless

### MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/meta/name/viewport

### What specific section or headline is this issue about?

#viewport_width_and_screen_width

### What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

The recommendation of `` and the discussion of `initial-scale=1.0`

### What did you expect to see?

If for example the page has text with ` `screenshots that happen to be wider than the device width, the page will get automatically zoomed and the text becomes unreadable small, at least in mobile Safari. This is why `initial-scale=1.0` is crucial. And in fact if `initial-scale=1.0` is specified, then `width=device-width` is redundant and unnecessary: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/UsingtheViewport/UsingtheViewport.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006509-SW26

### Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

_No response_

### Do you have anything more you want to share?

_No response_

### MDN metadata

Page report details

* Folder: `en-us/web/html/reference/elements/meta/name/viewport`
* MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/meta/name/viewport
* GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/web/html/reference/elements/meta/name/viewport/index.md
* Last commit: https://github.com/mdn/content/commit/4c58f4735f986a91bee1b77e336143630df727a2
* Document last modified: 2026-09-04T04:21:12.000Z

Open files/en-us/web/html/reference/elements/meta/name/viewport/index.md and read the #viewport_width_and_screen_width section. Compare its guidance with the linked Apple Safari viewport documentation and verify the behavior described in the issue. Done means the page accurately explains when initial-scale=1.0 matters and whether width=device-width is redundant.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.