51 ms·

Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

268 points by uladzislau 9y ago

rogerwang 9y ago
NW.js will continue to support running Chrome Apps: https://nwjs.io/blog/chrome-apps-support/ https://nwjs.io/blog/chrome-apps-support/
- xab9 9y ago
  Thanks Roger, I love nwjs (still prefer it over electron), thank you for your work!
jacobkg 9y ago
I'm really confused about what this means for Chrome Apps on ChromeOS. We use Electron for Windows/Mac/Linux but as far as I know Chrome Apps are still the only game in town for ChromeOS. Is there another way to release apps for Chrome OS?
- icebraining 9y ago
  "All types of Chrome apps will remain supported and maintained on Chrome OS for the foreseeable future. Additional enhancements to the Chrome apps platform will apply only to Chrome OS devices, including kiosks. Developers can continue to build Chrome apps (or Android apps) for Chrome OS." https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.ht...
  - josteink 9y ago
    So basically Google says they'll maintain and further develop this technology, so it can't be bad per se. They will however now reduce the amount of platforms it can run on to a fraction of what it was... But for what reason? (Since it's clearly an OK technology in the eyes of ChromeOS) This only shows yet again to never rely on a Google-based platform for your application or service.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      ...platforms it can run on to a fraction of what it was... The plan, of course, is that everyone will be on ChromeOS.
- robert_foss 9y ago
  Android apps are available on ChromeOS
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    Only if your device is on a list of recent supported Chromebooks and Chromeboxes. For instance my old Acer Chromebook 13 never got Android app support, it was too old despite being based on the same Nvidia Tegra K1 ARM CPU that has been used in a number of Android devices.
- angry_octet 9y ago
  This essentially means that Chrome Apps are dead. No one will spend money developing new concepts for such a small platform unless they are paid to do so.
- lordfosco 9y ago
  At this point in time you are probably better off writing Android apps (so mostly Java and some Kotlin) and improving them towards the usual screen ratio (and size) if Chromebook screens. I am wondering however when Google will actually mark those apps as "chromeOS optimized" (or is that already a thing?) - it really shouldn't be a big deal to find those apps that really shine one Chromebooks.
ISL 9y ago
As an order-of-magnitude estimate, let's assume that 1 billion users use Chrome. TFA states: "approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and Linux actively use Chrome packaged apps." That's 10 million active users who can't install apps that they use on their next machine?
Groxx 9y ago
Good riddance. Hopefully they'll kill off the strange permission variations between extensions and apps too, that's been nothing but confusing and a plague on building anything useful.
paxys 9y ago
It seems like I'm the only one who is happy about this. What's the point of restricting apps built using open web standards to one proprietary browser and app store? Agreed that there was a gap in offline support which Chrome filled at the time, but now it's time to move on and use newer and more widely supported APIs.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- chrismorgan 9y ago
  It is nonetheless interesting that Google have killed this off some time before a complete replacement is ready. It reminds me (to a slightly reduced extent) of how Google Gears was killed off completely before an alternative for its offline support existed—it was four years before service workers fixed that. Still, removing such things early has helped people adopt the standardised form rather than continuing with a Google-specific thing, so as a Firefox proponent I’m glad they did it this way each time, however little sense it seems to make from Google’s and the user’s perspective (seriously, they actively removed offline support from Gmail—and they still haven’t reintroduced it).
spookyuser 9y ago
If "Google says Progressive Web Apps are the future of app-like webpages." Then why do the chrome website auditing tools promote progressive web apps as the first analytic for the performance of a page. Surely only a small subset of webpages are going to be 'app-like'.
bwang29 9y ago
This is really going to hurt Windows users who do not want to use .exe or Windows 10 apps, which are both very heavy and less secure when it comes to https or remote content loading compared to Chrome Apps (Windows UWP in this case). Disclaimer: It's interesting to see that our app (Polarr) is in the screenshot (link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-editor/djonnbgfieijldcieafgjcnhmpcfpmgg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-edito...) Although ChromeOS is the smallest platform we currently support, we spent a lot of energy on it and it is so far, still the highest rated photo chrome app. To put things in perspective. Between September to December, our Chrome App user breakdown are Windows: 48.05% ChromeOS: 43.38% macOS: 7.11% Amount of users who used the app during this time frame: 326,459 (28.92% new). Between Jun and September, our user breakdown are Windows: 56.34% ChromeOS: 34.84% macOS: 7.25% Amount of users who used the app during this time frame: 280,013 (28.52% new).
- bsimpson 9y ago
  Have you looked into what it would take to port your app to current web standards? I suspect you can replace the deprecated functionality with wasm and a service worker.
  - bwang29 9y ago
    It should be very doable and we do have a self hosted solution at https://photoeditor.polarr.co https://photoeditor.polarr.co , which nobody uses as it is buried in terms of SEO (site like this https://www.pizap.com/pizap https://www.pizap.com/pizap has much higher page rank). We'd love to keep the app on the web store as the SEO and amount of reviews we built up made us really stand out of the crowd.
- shash7 9y ago
  Hey just a side note: Love your app. Been using the app version since ages.
- baxuz 9y ago
  Windows 10 redstone will support PWAs as first class desktop citizens. Even going as far to index them in the Windows store.
andreascmj 9y ago
Will you still be able to manually add webpages as apps to run them in separate windows? It's so nice to run youtube in a window without url-bar or tabs-
finchisko 9y ago
I'm using only Vysor and Postman Chrome Apps. So I can probably switch to their Electron variants. But have mixed feeling about Chrome Apps discontinued. On one hand it's good as Chrome Apps were tied just to Chrome/ChromeOS, while web apps should be platform agnostic. On other hand, Chrome apps were much smaller than Electron apps, as Election runtime has not to be included with every app (Chrome was the shared runtime). There is about 2 orders of magnitude size difference (megabytes vs. hundreds of MBs). Wish we have system level support for Electron apps, so not every single one has to bundle Electron libraries separately. Edit: There is already project that is targeting that. https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-with-electrino-c7ffdf1d6297 https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-w...
- okonomiyaki3000 9y ago
  Postman is great and they've had a standalone app for a while. It should work well for you unless you make use of a 'hosts' file. That's right, the standalone Postman app will just ignore it. Oh, they know about the bug. There's been a Github issue about it for over year with plenty of "Me too!" responses. They've done a ton of releases since then too, fixing bugs, adding features... all of which is meaningless if you need it to respect your hosts file settings like any normal app.
dmitriid 9y ago
> Google said that "approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and Linux actively use Chrome packaged apps." Well, if you delegate discovery of said apps to a small icon no one can see on screen, then no surprise.
danirod 9y ago
Honestly, I'm all in for PWAs in favour of Chrome Apps. To the final user, a PWA will work the same: an icon and a chrome-less window. However, they are built on top of open standards, so any browser can support PWAs and provide the same experience to their users, unlike Chrome apps, which only were supposed to work in Chrome. I hope that in the transition, we see more and more progressive web applications. PWAs have replaced a few native apps on my phone and I couldn't be happier about it. I can use Twitter, Telegram, YouTube and even read HN (via the Premii webapp [1]) through a fullscreen interface that behaves like a native application (no address bar, tinted notifications bar, push notifications for Twitter and Telegram), but that nonetheless is still a browser. Support for PWAs on Firefox for Android is around the corner. I'm a Firefox Nightly user and the support is there: websites that have a webapp manifest display an icon on the address bar to let you quickly "install" the application as an icon to the homescreen. It is supposed to reach stable channel on Firefox 58 [2]. [1]: http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/ [2]: http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/24/firefox-58-will-let-add-progressive-web-apps-home-screen/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/24/firefox-58-will-let-...
- mephitix 9y ago
  There is virtually no iOS support though. Even though service worker and app manifest are being worked on at the moment in Webkit I think it'll be a while before we see safari/mobile safari updated. I completely agree PWAs are the way forward though.
  - bad_user 9y ago
    That's Apple's problem though and they've been lagging behind for quite some time. On Android it's possible for example to run Facebook as a web app, because Chrome on Android can deliver notifications, keeping that connection persistent, so even after the page has been closed. And this is pretty cool because the browser is a much better sandbox than the OS. Now I use an iPhone and I'm very uncomfortable giving access to my photos to Facebook just for uploading a file.
    - denisw 9y ago
coldtea 9y ago
Hopefully this convinced the last person still gullible enough to believe on Google's interest to maintain long term (let's say, more than a decade) any service that's not Search, Ads, YouTube, Gmail or Android. I wouldn't build much on GAE either...
- yoodenvranx 9y ago
  > YouTube Even Youtube is not safe, have a look at the Adpocalypse a few months ago or all the wrong/incorrect demonetization of innocent videos.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    You mean that they finally started to pay attention to the ludicrous crap they were giving money to that advertisers wanted nothing to do with? What a surprise. It was deserved and a long time coming. People need to learn that whatever horrible thing you put online doesn’t automatically get you paid. Advertisers don’t want to sponsor “anything” because it reflects poorly on them.
    - yoodenvranx 9y ago
      No, the problem is that a lot of good content got flagged while a lot of garbage is still monetized.
      - MBCook 9y ago
        It will all be sorted out (to some degree). I don’t understand how YouTubers expected to never have advertisers try to scrutinize what they’re supporting or putting their name next to. And yes, good people are getting dragged down by association because there are other things on YT that are toxic to advertisers like the weird copyright infringing kids content or the seemingly abusive kids content. But if YT is going to host that stuff (they are), and you’re going to use their site too, then you’re going to get lumped in. It’s the same problem as the dark web. Yes, there are a handful of legal sites that may be useful. But when a huge chunk of what it’s actualky used for is horribly illegal things you’re going to to get lumped in. I’m kind of surprised YTers weren’t pushing YT to clean up a lot of this stuff earlier so this wouldn’t have happened.
PuffinBlue 9y ago
Great. Anyone have any suggestions for a replacement for Authy? It's a 2FA Chrome App that syncs your 2FA tokens across devices. They have a 'desktop app' now available for Mac and Windows, but of course nothing for Linux (surprise surprise). So any equivalent that will work cross platform and sync too?
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  If your tokens synchronize across multiple devices don't they stop being a legitimate "factor"?
  - nindalf 9y ago
    I completely agree with this, but I would prefer if there was a mechanism to keep offline backups. Currently if I lose my phone I am frozen out of my accounts. 1-time codes do exist but they have issues - either they're very easily accessible in the form of a printed paper or they're very difficult to access like an encrypted backup in the cloud. I don't have a good solution to this problem - I am mugged while traveling and I lose my phone and wallet. If anyone could share how they tackle this problem I'd be grateful.
    - PuffinBlue 9y ago
      What is 2FA? It's 'something you have'. It's not 'one single thing on one device only'. It's just 'something you have'. 'Something you have' relies on physical security, so if you have the same physical security for both your laptop and phone, there's no reduction by having a 2FA token on each device.
      - smt88 9y ago
        That's only true if there's a physical barrier to propagating your tokens to new devices. The concern is that Authy changes the second factor from physical security back to something cloud-based and hackable. I don't know if that's legit because I don't know how Authy works.
sohkamyung 9y ago
I'm use the Chrome App version of Pocket to download and read my Pocket articles offline on Windows 10. Any suggestions for a replacement? I'm currently trying Poki [1] but I find it's offline reading features too limited for my tastes. Pocket hints they may produce a Windows 10 app but that's a vague promise at the moment. [1] https://pokiapp.com/ https://pokiapp.com/
seanwilson 9y ago
I'm not keen on this decision. Chrome Apps could do more than progressive web apps could do but less than Electron apps. For some uses, now your only option is to implement an Electron app. Electron is much heavier, requires more trust because its a native app, makes cross platform support harder and you're missing out on the update, payment and discoverability features of the Chrome Web Store. I'd prefer progressive web apps over Electron and Chrome Apps but they're not powerful enough to replace all use cases yet. I agree Chrome Apps weren't being widely used but I like the idea behind web apps replacing native apps (including Electron) where suitable.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  > For some uses, now your only option is to implement an Electron app. No, there are plenty of options when doing native development.
  - seanwilson 9y ago
    > No, there are plenty of options when doing native development. I was mostly meaning if you have an existing Chrome App or wanted to rely on existing JavaScript libraries. Electron gets a huge amount of hate on HN but I personally see the native route as very unappealing. With less developer resources (and perhaps a slightly worse UI; I think people really over exaggerate here), you get fairly simple cross platform support, an update system, access to a huge JavaScript ecosystem and your code can be shared between desktop, mobile, web and server-side. As a developer, I don't see the appeal of e.g. QT, Java or OS specific implementations at all compared to the above. In my opinion, you're trading a small increase in UX and improved system resource usage (which most users won't notice) for a massive increase in developer resources. This is an order of magnitude worse if you're going to do a separate implementation for each platform as well as now you're going to need platform specific libraries, testing frameworks, development workflows etc. for each OS. Unless you have lots of money, it's not practical to support multiple platforms with a 100% native experience using the minimal amount of CPU and memory possible. If you have an existing web app, moving to Electron isn't a big leap but that isn't the case if you want to have multiple native apps.
sofaofthedamned 9y ago
What's going to happen to the SSH app? It was awesome for when I didn't have access to a full-fat client.
- brandonhorst 9y ago
  It's going away for non-ChromeOS systems.
therealmarv 9y ago
This PWA Chrome apps is something I see as ultimate goal for all Electron apps: Have a one point JVM like instance, share resources across all Electron apps. So now many major Chrome Apps go Electron and I have 4-5 big Electron Chrome instances running... what a step backward on my 8GB RAM Mac! Personal side note: I will miss Postmann Interceptor because I can catch cookies from a web login with the pwa app without any copy&pasting data and continue using our REST api with this cookes. <- not possible with Electron Postman.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > what a step backward on my 8GB RAM Mac! And what a step backward on a 2GB RAM notebook that would otherwise be fine for office and browsing tasks.
martin_drapeau 9y ago
PWAs are pretty cool. However when 60% of your users are on iOS, its not worth the investment until Apple supports them. That won’t happen because it would compete agaisnt native apps. Apple purposely blocks web apps from existing on iOS. Installed Web apps use an old WebView with less HTML5 features than Safari. Your web app is fast on Safari, but slow once installed.
bane 9y ago
What's the future for Chrome Remote Desktop?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Just to suggest a possibility: Chrome Remote Desktop is also an Android app and the technology to run Android apps in Chrome on Desktop has been available for some time; it shouldn't take much, if Google wanted, to let desktop Chrome use the Play Store and use APKs directly rather than repackaging them (as via the developer preview ARC Welder tool) into CRXs.
- pgrote 9y ago
  They are deprecating the app and going to a web application. There is also a companion extension, but I am unsure what purpose it serves. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uVCvlergXOE;context-place=topicsearchin/chrome/apps https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uVCvle... https://remotedesktop.google.com/ https://remotedesktop.google.com/
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Extensions can use some APIs that are not available to web apps (but not all of the ones that Chrome Apps could use), and Web App + Extension is one of the Google recommended migration paths for Chrome Apps that use functionality beyond that available to pure web apps.
EamonnMR 9y ago
I only ever used one-the SSH client. It was far nicer than PUTTY for those occasions where I needed to SSH from windows. Maybe I'll just do it from Termux on my phone from now on.
- jrimbault 9y ago
  You could also install the WSL and a nice terminal emulator of your choice. Though if you need to SSH from a Windows box only on rare occasions, the phone might be enough.
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LordKano 9y ago
After the frustration I faced when google killed iGoogle, I decided that I would never again become invested in anything from Google other than search and email.
- brazzledazzle 9y ago
  Is the expectation that Google maintain products even when they're not profitable or beneficial for them? I can understand if they don't provide a reasonable sunset date but investing yourself in any company's product is a risk. At least with Google you'll get notice instead of a static html page one day announcing the shuttering of the service.
  - thedaemon 9y ago
    It's also a problem with a web-centric application developers. With a traditional software application, if the developer stops putting out updates you still have working software. With Google's services, you no longer have working software.
  - LordKano 9y ago
    I completely understand that Google has to retire products that are not profitable. I'm speaking only of my own frustration. There are ripple effects that impact Google's other businesses. I wasn't willing to switch to Google Plus for that same reason. I'm certain that I'm not the only one.
addicted 9y ago
I hate that Google axes features because only 1% of users are using them. 1% of Chrome’s users are millions of users.
mankash666 9y ago
Pity. The underlying Nacl/PNacl technology is eons ahead of wasm, with better, if not equivalent security. It even had simd support!
polock 9y ago
Then...does it means they will shut down Chromebook as well? I can't understand. Chrome apps supported the environment of not only Chrome browser but Chrome OS as well so far. Do they have other plan for Chromebook? Weird decision...weird.
assafmo 9y ago
So... anyone knows a good VideoStream replacement?
- thatmatt 9y ago
  Videostream is a good Videostream replacement. New version is not a Chrome App, beta at https://getvideostream.com/ https://getvideostream.com/ ;)
  - assafmo 9y ago
    Thanks! I'll wait for the linux version
thatmatt 9y ago
As a chrome app dev (Videostream is our app) the transition has been really annoying. They've given us ample time to prepare for the shutdown and we've developed a new app, from scratch, to work outside of the Chrome app world but they (as engineers tend to do) did nothing to mitigate the disaster of a transition. Through blogs, tweets, etc. directly pointing to the webstore, we have years of SEO built up all pointing directly to what will now be a dead link. We've been pestering Google for a way to have a redirect or link on that page that says "get the app for windows and mac in its new home over here" but they haven't been very responsive. It's such a shitty way to treat developers who chose your ecosystem and who you did a certain amount of convincing. They have done this to us once before, with their wallet for digital goods, where they shut that down and developers lost any recurring subscriptions they had on the platform. Basically, google is brutal if you develop on a platform for them that they decide to axe, they really don't think of the people and companies and how they will be affected and we now think twice before choosing to use anything they maintain.
- xangold 9y ago
  I use your app (thank you!). Did you consider setting up your own redirect URL for SEO/be more resilient to 3rd party changes like this? That seems like a permanent fix in case you decided to change platforms as well.
z3t4 9y ago
Don't forget about application mode in Chrome: Menu > Tools > Add to desktop. It will then run the web site "chrome-less" without address bar etc.

268 points by uladzislau 9y ago

NW.js will continue to support running Chrome Apps: https://nwjs.io/blog/chrome-apps-support/ https://nwjs.io/blog/chrome-apps-support/

xab9 9y ago
Thanks Roger, I love nwjs (still prefer it over electron), thank you for your work!

jacobkg 9y ago

I'm really confused about what this means for Chrome Apps on ChromeOS. We use Electron for Windows/Mac/Linux but as far as I know Chrome Apps are still the only game in town for ChromeOS. Is there another way to release apps for Chrome OS?

icebraining 9y ago
"All types of Chrome apps will remain supported and maintained on Chrome OS for the foreseeable future. Additional enhancements to the Chrome apps platform will apply only to Chrome OS devices, including kiosks. Developers can continue to build Chrome apps (or Android apps) for Chrome OS." https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.ht...
- josteink 9y ago
  So basically Google says they'll maintain and further develop this technology, so it can't be bad per se. They will however now reduce the amount of platforms it can run on to a fraction of what it was... But for what reason? (Since it's clearly an OK technology in the eyes of ChromeOS) This only shows yet again to never rely on a Google-based platform for your application or service.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    ...platforms it can run on to a fraction of what it was... The plan, of course, is that everyone will be on ChromeOS.
robert_foss 9y ago
Android apps are available on ChromeOS
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  Only if your device is on a list of recent supported Chromebooks and Chromeboxes. For instance my old Acer Chromebook 13 never got Android app support, it was too old despite being based on the same Nvidia Tegra K1 ARM CPU that has been used in a number of Android devices.
angry_octet 9y ago
This essentially means that Chrome Apps are dead. No one will spend money developing new concepts for such a small platform unless they are paid to do so.
lordfosco 9y ago
At this point in time you are probably better off writing Android apps (so mostly Java and some Kotlin) and improving them towards the usual screen ratio (and size) if Chromebook screens. I am wondering however when Google will actually mark those apps as "chromeOS optimized" (or is that already a thing?) - it really shouldn't be a big deal to find those apps that really shine one Chromebooks.

ISL 9y ago

As an order-of-magnitude estimate, let's assume that 1 billion users use Chrome. TFA states: "approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and Linux actively use Chrome packaged apps." That's 10 million active users who can't install apps that they use on their next machine?

Groxx 9y ago

Good riddance. Hopefully they'll kill off the strange permission variations between extensions and apps too, that's been nothing but confusing and a plague on building anything useful.

paxys 9y ago

It seems like I'm the only one who is happy about this. What's the point of restricting apps built using open web standards to one proprietary browser and app store? Agreed that there was a gap in offline support which Chrome filled at the time, but now it's time to move on and use newer and more widely supported APIs.

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chrismorgan 9y ago
It is nonetheless interesting that Google have killed this off some time before a complete replacement is ready. It reminds me (to a slightly reduced extent) of how Google Gears was killed off completely before an alternative for its offline support existed—it was four years before service workers fixed that. Still, removing such things early has helped people adopt the standardised form rather than continuing with a Google-specific thing, so as a Firefox proponent I’m glad they did it this way each time, however little sense it seems to make from Google’s and the user’s perspective (seriously, they actively removed offline support from Gmail—and they still haven’t reintroduced it).

spookyuser 9y ago

If "Google says Progressive Web Apps are the future of app-like webpages." Then why do the chrome website auditing tools promote progressive web apps as the first analytic for the performance of a page. Surely only a small subset of webpages are going to be 'app-like'.

bwang29 9y ago

This is really going to hurt Windows users who do not want to use .exe or Windows 10 apps, which are both very heavy and less secure when it comes to https or remote content loading compared to Chrome Apps (Windows UWP in this case). Disclaimer: It's interesting to see that our app (Polarr) is in the screenshot (link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-editor/djonnbgfieijldcieafgjcnhmpcfpmgg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-edito...) Although ChromeOS is the smallest platform we currently support, we spent a lot of energy on it and it is so far, still the highest rated photo chrome app. To put things in perspective. Between September to December, our Chrome App user breakdown are Windows: 48.05% ChromeOS: 43.38% macOS: 7.11% Amount of users who used the app during this time frame: 326,459 (28.92% new). Between Jun and September, our user breakdown are Windows: 56.34% ChromeOS: 34.84% macOS: 7.25% Amount of users who used the app during this time frame: 280,013 (28.52% new).

bsimpson 9y ago
Have you looked into what it would take to port your app to current web standards? I suspect you can replace the deprecated functionality with wasm and a service worker.
- bwang29 9y ago
  It should be very doable and we do have a self hosted solution at https://photoeditor.polarr.co https://photoeditor.polarr.co , which nobody uses as it is buried in terms of SEO (site like this https://www.pizap.com/pizap https://www.pizap.com/pizap has much higher page rank). We'd love to keep the app on the web store as the SEO and amount of reviews we built up made us really stand out of the crowd.
shash7 9y ago
Hey just a side note: Love your app. Been using the app version since ages.
baxuz 9y ago
Windows 10 redstone will support PWAs as first class desktop citizens. Even going as far to index them in the Windows store.

andreascmj 9y ago

Will you still be able to manually add webpages as apps to run them in separate windows? It's so nice to run youtube in a window without url-bar or tabs-

finchisko 9y ago

I'm using only Vysor and Postman Chrome Apps. So I can probably switch to their Electron variants. But have mixed feeling about Chrome Apps discontinued. On one hand it's good as Chrome Apps were tied just to Chrome/ChromeOS, while web apps should be platform agnostic. On other hand, Chrome apps were much smaller than Electron apps, as Election runtime has not to be included with every app (Chrome was the shared runtime). There is about 2 orders of magnitude size difference (megabytes vs. hundreds of MBs). Wish we have system level support for Electron apps, so not every single one has to bundle Electron libraries separately. Edit: There is already project that is targeting that. https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-with-electrino-c7ffdf1d6297 https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-w...

okonomiyaki3000 9y ago
Postman is great and they've had a standalone app for a while. It should work well for you unless you make use of a 'hosts' file. That's right, the standalone Postman app will just ignore it. Oh, they know about the bug. There's been a Github issue about it for over year with plenty of "Me too!" responses. They've done a ton of releases since then too, fixing bugs, adding features... all of which is meaningless if you need it to respect your hosts file settings like any normal app.

dmitriid 9y ago

> Google said that "approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and Linux actively use Chrome packaged apps." Well, if you delegate discovery of said apps to a small icon no one can see on screen, then no surprise.

danirod 9y ago

Honestly, I'm all in for PWAs in favour of Chrome Apps. To the final user, a PWA will work the same: an icon and a chrome-less window. However, they are built on top of open standards, so any browser can support PWAs and provide the same experience to their users, unlike Chrome apps, which only were supposed to work in Chrome. I hope that in the transition, we see more and more progressive web applications. PWAs have replaced a few native apps on my phone and I couldn't be happier about it. I can use Twitter, Telegram, YouTube and even read HN (via the Premii webapp [1]) through a fullscreen interface that behaves like a native application (no address bar, tinted notifications bar, push notifications for Twitter and Telegram), but that nonetheless is still a browser. Support for PWAs on Firefox for Android is around the corner. I'm a Firefox Nightly user and the support is there: websites that have a webapp manifest display an icon on the address bar to let you quickly "install" the application as an icon to the homescreen. It is supposed to reach stable channel on Firefox 58 [2]. [1]: http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/ [2]: http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/24/firefox-58-will-let-add-progressive-web-apps-home-screen/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/24/firefox-58-will-let-...

mephitix 9y ago
There is virtually no iOS support though. Even though service worker and app manifest are being worked on at the moment in Webkit I think it'll be a while before we see safari/mobile safari updated. I completely agree PWAs are the way forward though.
- bad_user 9y ago
  That's Apple's problem though and they've been lagging behind for quite some time. On Android it's possible for example to run Facebook as a web app, because Chrome on Android can deliver notifications, keeping that connection persistent, so even after the page has been closed. And this is pretty cool because the browser is a much better sandbox than the OS. Now I use an iPhone and I'm very uncomfortable giving access to my photos to Facebook just for uploading a file.
  - denisw 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago

Hopefully this convinced the last person still gullible enough to believe on Google's interest to maintain long term (let's say, more than a decade) any service that's not Search, Ads, YouTube, Gmail or Android. I wouldn't build much on GAE either...

yoodenvranx 9y ago
> YouTube Even Youtube is not safe, have a look at the Adpocalypse a few months ago or all the wrong/incorrect demonetization of innocent videos.
- MBCook 9y ago
  You mean that they finally started to pay attention to the ludicrous crap they were giving money to that advertisers wanted nothing to do with? What a surprise. It was deserved and a long time coming. People need to learn that whatever horrible thing you put online doesn’t automatically get you paid. Advertisers don’t want to sponsor “anything” because it reflects poorly on them.
  - yoodenvranx 9y ago
    No, the problem is that a lot of good content got flagged while a lot of garbage is still monetized.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      It will all be sorted out (to some degree). I don’t understand how YouTubers expected to never have advertisers try to scrutinize what they’re supporting or putting their name next to. And yes, good people are getting dragged down by association because there are other things on YT that are toxic to advertisers like the weird copyright infringing kids content or the seemingly abusive kids content. But if YT is going to host that stuff (they are), and you’re going to use their site too, then you’re going to get lumped in. It’s the same problem as the dark web. Yes, there are a handful of legal sites that may be useful. But when a huge chunk of what it’s actualky used for is horribly illegal things you’re going to to get lumped in. I’m kind of surprised YTers weren’t pushing YT to clean up a lot of this stuff earlier so this wouldn’t have happened.

PuffinBlue 9y ago

Great. Anyone have any suggestions for a replacement for Authy? It's a 2FA Chrome App that syncs your 2FA tokens across devices. They have a 'desktop app' now available for Mac and Windows, but of course nothing for Linux (surprise surprise). So any equivalent that will work cross platform and sync too?

LeoPanthera 9y ago
If your tokens synchronize across multiple devices don't they stop being a legitimate "factor"?
- nindalf 9y ago
  I completely agree with this, but I would prefer if there was a mechanism to keep offline backups. Currently if I lose my phone I am frozen out of my accounts. 1-time codes do exist but they have issues - either they're very easily accessible in the form of a printed paper or they're very difficult to access like an encrypted backup in the cloud. I don't have a good solution to this problem - I am mugged while traveling and I lose my phone and wallet. If anyone could share how they tackle this problem I'd be grateful.
  - PuffinBlue 9y ago
    What is 2FA? It's 'something you have'. It's not 'one single thing on one device only'. It's just 'something you have'. 'Something you have' relies on physical security, so if you have the same physical security for both your laptop and phone, there's no reduction by having a 2FA token on each device.
    - smt88 9y ago
      That's only true if there's a physical barrier to propagating your tokens to new devices. The concern is that Authy changes the second factor from physical security back to something cloud-based and hackable. I don't know if that's legit because I don't know how Authy works.

sohkamyung 9y ago

I'm use the Chrome App version of Pocket to download and read my Pocket articles offline on Windows 10. Any suggestions for a replacement? I'm currently trying Poki [1] but I find it's offline reading features too limited for my tastes. Pocket hints they may produce a Windows 10 app but that's a vague promise at the moment. [1] https://pokiapp.com/ https://pokiapp.com/

seanwilson 9y ago

I'm not keen on this decision. Chrome Apps could do more than progressive web apps could do but less than Electron apps. For some uses, now your only option is to implement an Electron app. Electron is much heavier, requires more trust because its a native app, makes cross platform support harder and you're missing out on the update, payment and discoverability features of the Chrome Web Store. I'd prefer progressive web apps over Electron and Chrome Apps but they're not powerful enough to replace all use cases yet. I agree Chrome Apps weren't being widely used but I like the idea behind web apps replacing native apps (including Electron) where suitable.

pjmlp 9y ago
> For some uses, now your only option is to implement an Electron app. No, there are plenty of options when doing native development.
- seanwilson 9y ago
  > No, there are plenty of options when doing native development. I was mostly meaning if you have an existing Chrome App or wanted to rely on existing JavaScript libraries. Electron gets a huge amount of hate on HN but I personally see the native route as very unappealing. With less developer resources (and perhaps a slightly worse UI; I think people really over exaggerate here), you get fairly simple cross platform support, an update system, access to a huge JavaScript ecosystem and your code can be shared between desktop, mobile, web and server-side. As a developer, I don't see the appeal of e.g. QT, Java or OS specific implementations at all compared to the above. In my opinion, you're trading a small increase in UX and improved system resource usage (which most users won't notice) for a massive increase in developer resources. This is an order of magnitude worse if you're going to do a separate implementation for each platform as well as now you're going to need platform specific libraries, testing frameworks, development workflows etc. for each OS. Unless you have lots of money, it's not practical to support multiple platforms with a 100% native experience using the minimal amount of CPU and memory possible. If you have an existing web app, moving to Electron isn't a big leap but that isn't the case if you want to have multiple native apps.

sofaofthedamned 9y ago

What's going to happen to the SSH app? It was awesome for when I didn't have access to a full-fat client.

brandonhorst 9y ago
It's going away for non-ChromeOS systems.

therealmarv 9y ago

This PWA Chrome apps is something I see as ultimate goal for all Electron apps: Have a one point JVM like instance, share resources across all Electron apps. So now many major Chrome Apps go Electron and I have 4-5 big Electron Chrome instances running... what a step backward on my 8GB RAM Mac! Personal side note: I will miss Postmann Interceptor because I can catch cookies from a web login with the pwa app without any copy&pasting data and continue using our REST api with this cookes. <- not possible with Electron Postman.

majewsky 9y ago
> what a step backward on my 8GB RAM Mac! And what a step backward on a 2GB RAM notebook that would otherwise be fine for office and browsing tasks.

martin_drapeau 9y ago

PWAs are pretty cool. However when 60% of your users are on iOS, its not worth the investment until Apple supports them. That won’t happen because it would compete agaisnt native apps. Apple purposely blocks web apps from existing on iOS. Installed Web apps use an old WebView with less HTML5 features than Safari. Your web app is fast on Safari, but slow once installed.

bane 9y ago

What's the future for Chrome Remote Desktop?

dragonwriter 9y ago
Just to suggest a possibility: Chrome Remote Desktop is also an Android app and the technology to run Android apps in Chrome on Desktop has been available for some time; it shouldn't take much, if Google wanted, to let desktop Chrome use the Play Store and use APKs directly rather than repackaging them (as via the developer preview ARC Welder tool) into CRXs.
pgrote 9y ago
They are deprecating the app and going to a web application. There is also a companion extension, but I am unsure what purpose it serves. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uVCvlergXOE;context-place=topicsearchin/chrome/apps https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uVCvle... https://remotedesktop.google.com/ https://remotedesktop.google.com/
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Extensions can use some APIs that are not available to web apps (but not all of the ones that Chrome Apps could use), and Web App + Extension is one of the Google recommended migration paths for Chrome Apps that use functionality beyond that available to pure web apps.

EamonnMR 9y ago

I only ever used one-the SSH client. It was far nicer than PUTTY for those occasions where I needed to SSH from windows. Maybe I'll just do it from Termux on my phone from now on.

jrimbault 9y ago
You could also install the WSL and a nice terminal emulator of your choice. Though if you need to SSH from a Windows box only on rare occasions, the phone might be enough.

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LordKano 9y ago

After the frustration I faced when google killed iGoogle, I decided that I would never again become invested in anything from Google other than search and email.

brazzledazzle 9y ago
Is the expectation that Google maintain products even when they're not profitable or beneficial for them? I can understand if they don't provide a reasonable sunset date but investing yourself in any company's product is a risk. At least with Google you'll get notice instead of a static html page one day announcing the shuttering of the service.
- thedaemon 9y ago
  It's also a problem with a web-centric application developers. With a traditional software application, if the developer stops putting out updates you still have working software. With Google's services, you no longer have working software.
- LordKano 9y ago
  I completely understand that Google has to retire products that are not profitable. I'm speaking only of my own frustration. There are ripple effects that impact Google's other businesses. I wasn't willing to switch to Google Plus for that same reason. I'm certain that I'm not the only one.

addicted 9y ago

I hate that Google axes features because only 1% of users are using them. 1% of Chrome’s users are millions of users.

mankash666 9y ago

Pity. The underlying Nacl/PNacl technology is eons ahead of wasm, with better, if not equivalent security. It even had simd support!

polock 9y ago

Then...does it means they will shut down Chromebook as well? I can't understand. Chrome apps supported the environment of not only Chrome browser but Chrome OS as well so far. Do they have other plan for Chromebook? Weird decision...weird.

assafmo 9y ago

So... anyone knows a good VideoStream replacement?

thatmatt 9y ago
Videostream is a good Videostream replacement. New version is not a Chrome App, beta at https://getvideostream.com/ https://getvideostream.com/ ;)
- assafmo 9y ago
  Thanks! I'll wait for the linux version

thatmatt 9y ago

As a chrome app dev (Videostream is our app) the transition has been really annoying. They've given us ample time to prepare for the shutdown and we've developed a new app, from scratch, to work outside of the Chrome app world but they (as engineers tend to do) did nothing to mitigate the disaster of a transition. Through blogs, tweets, etc. directly pointing to the webstore, we have years of SEO built up all pointing directly to what will now be a dead link. We've been pestering Google for a way to have a redirect or link on that page that says "get the app for windows and mac in its new home over here" but they haven't been very responsive. It's such a shitty way to treat developers who chose your ecosystem and who you did a certain amount of convincing. They have done this to us once before, with their wallet for digital goods, where they shut that down and developers lost any recurring subscriptions they had on the platform. Basically, google is brutal if you develop on a platform for them that they decide to axe, they really don't think of the people and companies and how they will be affected and we now think twice before choosing to use anything they maintain.

xangold 9y ago
I use your app (thank you!). Did you consider setting up your own redirect URL for SEO/be more resilient to 3rd party changes like this? That seems like a permanent fix in case you decided to change platforms as well.

z3t4 9y ago

Don't forget about application mode in Chrome: Menu > Tools > Add to desktop. It will then run the web site "chrome-less" without address bar etc.