What is WebView2 ?

WebView2 is a control provided by Microsoft that allows applications to embed web technologies into their apps (it uses Microsoft Edge as the rendering engine).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/

Historically Rhapsody used an embedded Internet Explorer whenever it needed to display web content (such as the Welcome Page or a login page for RMM). Starting in version 10 it has now switched to using WebView2. 

Why Does it Matter ? 

For the most part it shouldn't - you won't even notice it unless you are looking in the task manager and you're wondering what all these WebView2 Manager processes are. WebView2 is installed by default on Windows 11 but if you are using an earlier version or Windows Server then it isn't and you'll usually need to download it from Microsoft because Rhapsody doesn't ship it. And thats when it might matter - if you download it yourself then it may not be the version Rhapsody expects and this can cause crashes whenever Rhapsody needs to display a web page, which is more often than you think. Even Help > About is a web page !

By default Rhapsody displays the Welcome Page whenever you launch the appication - which if you have a WebView2 problem may cause Rhapsody to crash instantly (you can stop that by changing the setting in your ini file: SHOW_WIZARD_AT_STARTUP=FALSE). 

If you have a problem with web page content not showing up or crashing Rhapsody - contact IBM Support !