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> With a progressive web app if they like your app they can add it to their device home screen Does anyone even know they can do that? I've never seen anyone d

> With a progressive web app if they like your app they can add it to their device home screen Does anyone even know they can do that? I've never seen anyone do it "in the wild". Would love to see any stats around usage of pwa's added to home screen.

timdavila 8y ago
I run a PWA and can track this based on the "standalone" property. But what's more telling is customer requests. It's a confusing request that it seems like many potential customers haven't seen before. Lots of people ask me to "just put it in the app store" despite having an FAQ with instructions on how to add to the home screen. Many more say they will become customers "when you have an app" Because of this, I'm working on making my UI more app like and using Cordova to publish it to app stores. edit: My app is still pretty small but the percentage of logged in users who have ever loaded from the PWA is < 5%
- TomK32 8y ago
  Users always have to be educated, whether it's PWA or how to pronounce the @ symbol a mere 20 years ago.
plexicle 8y ago
Chrome on Android will show a banner to add it to your home screen.
- timdavila 8y ago
  True, the situation on Android is much better than iOS. Also after you do this, you get an icon in your app drawer and not just the homescreen.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    iOS doesn’t have an app drawer, so I’m not quite sure where you’re going with your comparison…
    - timdavila 8y ago
      Yep, sorry that was confusing. I was comparing to previous versions of Android. It's relatively new that it's added to the app drawer.
  - Ajedi32 8y ago
    It also shows up as an app in the system menu, with natively controlled permissions, notifications, battery restrictions, etc.
freehunter 8y ago
I run a website where I get asked quite often to make it into a mobile app, and I reply by showing how to add it to the device's homescreen and not need an app. Never ever ever in the few dozen times I've had this conversation has anyone ever actually done it. In fact most responses to that suggestion have been overwhelmingly negative. They want an app, even though it'd just be a wrapper around the site with no added features, they want an app.
- mountainofdeath 8y ago
  Bingo. That's exactly what end-consumers want. If you have a good enough PWA, you can wrap it in a single webview and push it to the appstore/play market. The presence is the important part, the actual implementation does not matter.
- mikece 8y ago
  Why not just add the ability to list a PWA in the app store? At that point the installation is intentional and the overhead on Apple/Google is minimal... and Apple still gets their $99/year to allow making it easy to put your app's icon on a user's home screen.
  - kyle-rb 8y ago
    On one hand I can see rational reasons for them not allowing it; Apple doesn't control when you push updates to your PWA, so they don't want to give their seal of approval by listing it in the app store. But on the other hand, it's pretty depressing to give up the dream of instant app updates, by wrapping your shiny PWA in Cordova and promising to never execute external JavaScript.
    - freehunter 8y ago
      I recently picked up app development and I went for React Native + Expo. I was shocked that I could push OTA updates without going through the store. Basically if my app was approved once, I can make huge sweeping fundamental changes to the app without running it past Apple again. Basically the only things you can't change are the permissions. Anything else is fair game. And with Expo it was basically trivial to get an app up and working (don't take this as biased praise in favor of RN or Expo, I still have serious dissatisfaction with both technologies, but this particular part was shockingly seamless). So I guess moral of the story, wrap your PWA in an Expo app and update as often as you want without having to resubmit.
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
My guess is that it's rare. Hell, I didn't even know I could do it until I was developing a PWA. I've never seen a website that offers it. It would be very nice if phones put that feature front-and-center. My guess is that they sideline it so the web can't compete with their native apps.
- zanny 8y ago
  It really reeks of the same kind of anticompetitive behavior that got MS in trouble twenty years ago. Apple is way worse in this regard, but Google is still incentivized to keep at least PWAs from being first class citizens on Android because they don't get their app store sales cuts or microtransaction money from them. And at least on Android you can install other browsers. People consider the hegemony of Chrome to be the premier threat to the open web but I keep feeling iOS Safari is the real drag. Apple is so heavily incentivized to sabotage web tech that could encroach on their app store revenue.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    They do it on ChromeOS though, so I guess it is politics as usual.
  - spunker540 8y ago
    You can use browsers other than Safari on iOS.
    - kyle-rb 8y ago
      All browsers on iOS are essentially wrappers for Safari. They all have to use the built-in iOS WebView; per Apple's rules you're not allowed to execute JS or anything like that on your own.
      - the_gipsy 8y ago
        Which means no extensions for iOS Firefox nor Chrome. I can’t install any adblockers on my iPhone, the best is Safari which has some built in anti-tracking but that’s it.
slimshady94 8y ago
I have a HN bookmark/icon on my home screen.
NightlyDev 8y ago
Yes. Most of my users are using the page as an app and the usage has only increased the last year's.

timdavila 8y ago

I run a PWA and can track this based on the "standalone" property. But what's more telling is customer requests. It's a confusing request that it seems like many potential customers haven't seen before. Lots of people ask me to "just put it in the app store" despite having an FAQ with instructions on how to add to the home screen. Many more say they will become customers "when you have an app" Because of this, I'm working on making my UI more app like and using Cordova to publish it to app stores. edit: My app is still pretty small but the percentage of logged in users who have ever loaded from the PWA is < 5%

TomK32 8y ago
Users always have to be educated, whether it's PWA or how to pronounce the @ symbol a mere 20 years ago.

plexicle 8y ago

Chrome on Android will show a banner to add it to your home screen.

timdavila 8y ago
True, the situation on Android is much better than iOS. Also after you do this, you get an icon in your app drawer and not just the homescreen.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  iOS doesn’t have an app drawer, so I’m not quite sure where you’re going with your comparison…
  - timdavila 8y ago
    Yep, sorry that was confusing. I was comparing to previous versions of Android. It's relatively new that it's added to the app drawer.
- Ajedi32 8y ago
  It also shows up as an app in the system menu, with natively controlled permissions, notifications, battery restrictions, etc.

freehunter 8y ago

I run a website where I get asked quite often to make it into a mobile app, and I reply by showing how to add it to the device's homescreen and not need an app. Never ever ever in the few dozen times I've had this conversation has anyone ever actually done it. In fact most responses to that suggestion have been overwhelmingly negative. They want an app, even though it'd just be a wrapper around the site with no added features, they want an app.

mountainofdeath 8y ago
Bingo. That's exactly what end-consumers want. If you have a good enough PWA, you can wrap it in a single webview and push it to the appstore/play market. The presence is the important part, the actual implementation does not matter.
mikece 8y ago
Why not just add the ability to list a PWA in the app store? At that point the installation is intentional and the overhead on Apple/Google is minimal... and Apple still gets their $99/year to allow making it easy to put your app's icon on a user's home screen.
- kyle-rb 8y ago
  On one hand I can see rational reasons for them not allowing it; Apple doesn't control when you push updates to your PWA, so they don't want to give their seal of approval by listing it in the app store. But on the other hand, it's pretty depressing to give up the dream of instant app updates, by wrapping your shiny PWA in Cordova and promising to never execute external JavaScript.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    I recently picked up app development and I went for React Native + Expo. I was shocked that I could push OTA updates without going through the store. Basically if my app was approved once, I can make huge sweeping fundamental changes to the app without running it past Apple again. Basically the only things you can't change are the permissions. Anything else is fair game. And with Expo it was basically trivial to get an app up and working (don't take this as biased praise in favor of RN or Expo, I still have serious dissatisfaction with both technologies, but this particular part was shockingly seamless). So I guess moral of the story, wrap your PWA in an Expo app and update as often as you want without having to resubmit.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

My guess is that it's rare. Hell, I didn't even know I could do it until I was developing a PWA. I've never seen a website that offers it. It would be very nice if phones put that feature front-and-center. My guess is that they sideline it so the web can't compete with their native apps.

zanny 8y ago
It really reeks of the same kind of anticompetitive behavior that got MS in trouble twenty years ago. Apple is way worse in this regard, but Google is still incentivized to keep at least PWAs from being first class citizens on Android because they don't get their app store sales cuts or microtransaction money from them. And at least on Android you can install other browsers. People consider the hegemony of Chrome to be the premier threat to the open web but I keep feeling iOS Safari is the real drag. Apple is so heavily incentivized to sabotage web tech that could encroach on their app store revenue.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  They do it on ChromeOS though, so I guess it is politics as usual.
- spunker540 8y ago
  You can use browsers other than Safari on iOS.
  - kyle-rb 8y ago
    All browsers on iOS are essentially wrappers for Safari. They all have to use the built-in iOS WebView; per Apple's rules you're not allowed to execute JS or anything like that on your own.
    - the_gipsy 8y ago
      Which means no extensions for iOS Firefox nor Chrome. I can’t install any adblockers on my iPhone, the best is Safari which has some built in anti-tracking but that’s it.

slimshady94 8y ago

I have a HN bookmark/icon on my home screen.

NightlyDev 8y ago

Yes. Most of my users are using the page as an app and the usage has only increased the last year's.