9 ms·

Google Play Store Now Open for Progressive Web Apps

256 points by jbuild 8y ago

75dvtwin 8y ago
Will the developer need to give 30% of the progressive app price to Google (if it is in the play store)? sorry in advance, if this has already been mentioned somewhere.
- dfabulich 8y ago
  Yes. The "Trusted Web Activities" (TWA) API referenced in this article is just a convenient way to turn a web page into an Android Activity. (An Activity is a screen in an Android app.) They don't let you paste an URL into the Google Play Store and convert it to APK automagically. You still have to install Android Studio, build your app as an APK, and upload it. You could do this before by coding up a full-screen WebView, but TWA is just nicer in a number of ways. If your app is a paid app, you'll pay Google 30% of that. TWA offers no convenient way to do in-app purchases; if it did, you'd still have to pay Google 30% for those IAPs.
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    > You still have to install Android Studio, build your app as an APK, and upload it. :( Not having to do that was what I was hoping for with stores allowing PWAs. Maybe it at least means that the APK only needs to be built once? If it has to be rebuilt for every release, I don't see what this offers that Cordova can't do better.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      From the article: "Is TWA a Hybrid framework, similar to Cordova? No. With Cordova or other hybrid solutions, you are typically shipping your web resources (HTML, JS, CSS, etc.) within your APK package. Also, the engine is different and isolated from the users’ browser, so no session or cache sharing. With Trusted Web Activity you don’t need to package any resource file from your PWA (only native components, in case you want them); all your resources will be downloaded and updated on the fly from your Service Worker. Your PWA will still be rendered with the installed Chrome version, sharing all storage, cache, and sessions with the browser. Therefore, if your user has a session on your website opened when the user installs the app from the Play Store, she will still be logged in. The user is just installing a shortcut to Chrome using a special mode."
      - pier25 8y ago
        So what's the point of the APK?
        UncleMeat 8y ago
        The OS needs an APK to run it. Just opening your page in the browser won't let you customize as much.
        int_19h 8y ago
        To contain the metadata for the store entry?
- krn 8y ago
  If I already have a web app with a built-in recurring subscription functionality, I shouldn't be required to abandon it just to get it published on the Google Play Store. The entire idea of allowing PWAs on Google Play Store seems to be a part of Google's wider product strategy, which includes ChromeOS and Android Go, where using a native app is not always the best choice. Microsoft Store has already been doing this for a while for a different reason: a lack of Windows alternatives to the most popular mobile apps. Apple, on the other hand, has no business case for integrating PWAs into the App Store, because they would just reduce its revenue.
  - taurath 8y ago
    If they allow PWAs to get around the 30% IAP feature, then in 5 years there will be no more native apps, only PWAs. I doubt they will allow any non-google play in app purchases to take place.
    - krn 8y ago
      I think the essence of a web app is that it works on any platform. It shouldn't know anything about Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Otherwise, it's just a native app with a webview.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        They are called PWA, not WA, with P meaning Progressive. The idea is that the app should check for available browser/OS APIs that progressively enhance user's experience. And no they aren't necessarily just a native app with a webview, on UWP a store delived PWA has full access to the UWP APIs, just like .NET and C++, no need to write extra FFI manually. No need for Frankenstein solutions like Cordova. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps/windows-features?branch=pwa#call-winrt-apis-from-your-pwa https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-...
- benologist 8y ago
  You'll also be switching to a payment provider you can never contact.
  - titanomachy 8y ago
    I think Google customer service has gotten better, last time I called I had a human in 3 mins or so. Not sure how useful those humans are on average, though. The one I got was helpful.
- kinlan 8y ago
  Team member here. You have to abide by all the rules of the store to be listed in the store.
abrowne 8y ago
> TWAs work only with Chrome today, but the API might be also cloned by other browsers, such as Samsung Internet, Edge or Firefox in the future. It's too bad it's Chrome-only now. But very good that using another engine is even possible.
osrec 8y ago
One of the wonderful things about a PWA is that it is so freeing (no app store gods to appease for approval etc etc). I'm a little afraid that putting PWAs in an app store may actually reduce the flexibility they offer by restricting what PWAs can and can't do. Then again, an app store may be a necessary to allow PWAs to diffuse into mainstream usage. Personally, I am looking forward to the day PWAs are considered on par with native apps by the general populace. I think we're getting there in terms of functionality and flexibility - I run https://usebx.com/app https://usebx.com/app which is a PWA, and my users are pretty happy with the functionality it delivers on all platforms. It also helped me launch with a smaller budget, since it's a single code base that runs on desktop, mobile or tablet. The one thing I will add is that building a high-quality, performant PWA is significantly harder than building a native app - why? because you really need to understand the workings of modern browsers to squeeze native like performance, and unfortunately, in my experience, very few web developers have that depth of understanding. I have been building web apps for 20 years (I started young), but when I decided to build Bx as a PWA, I had to learn a lot to achieve the quality I desired.
- CraftThatBlock 8y ago
  I think app stores are a great discovery tool for PWA. Searching for PWA in a centralize marketplace will most likely be one the tipping points of PWA, and putting amd emphasis on the "app" point. If their goal is to be the same as native apps, putting them together makes them even closer to that objective
  - pasta 8y ago
    Well I find myself not using the app store anymore because it's useless to find apps. There are no filters and no way to order results. Top downloads sometimes have worse scores than indy apps that only have a hundred downloads but work much better.
- dddw 8y ago
  wow you're app is really nice! superfast too
thinkingemote 8y ago
Can a user have as much control over a PWA as it's running in a browser instance compared to loading the site in regular Firefox mobile? In other words are PWA a way for people to write and run web apps but making sure the user can't run adblockers?
- SimeVidas 8y ago
  That’s a good point. My guess is that extensions do not run when a PWA is installed and launched in standalone mode.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Depends on the host OS. On Windows 10, PWAs are just another way of doing UWP native apps, as they replaced the former JavaScript language projection (WinJS) introduced in Windows 8.
jameslk 8y ago
PWAs along with Web Payments and WebAssembly seems like it will make big changes to the way the web works. It's blurring the line with web and native even further.
- sridca 8y ago
  I'm pretty confident that this is Google's long-term strategy and why I think chromeos will become popular in future.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Firstly it needs to move beyond an US centric market.
sandGorgon 8y ago
There has been a production TWA in the Play Store for a while now - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.mapslite https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... Works brilliantly.
- quentindemetz 8y ago
  I couldn't figure out how to mute voice directions during navigation
burtonator 8y ago
This is actually huge news. I'm really excited about this! I'm the author of a document management and annotation platform named Polar: https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ I'm working on the web+mobile version built on Firebase. The PWA should be straight forward but don't want to have to build another mobile app for it. With PWA this is going to be 100x easier. Additionally, the Play Store is a major source of new users. One of the things most independent app developers don't think about is distribution. Being in the Play Store means people have another chance to find your app!
- lucasverra 8y ago
  im following your steps and waiting for web&mobile to getpolarized ! any ETA to beta test ?
int_19h 8y ago
It's amusing that Microsoft is still the one embracing PWAs most - Win10 app store allows to publish them directly (you have to upload a package, but all that package contains is the URL for the actual app, and name and icon for the store). But then there's also Bing PWA crawler which finds and adds existing apps. It's literally the reverse of early 00s, when Microsoft was entrenched with rich desktop GUIs, and everybody else was hoping that web apps would be the way out of that lock-in. And now iOS and Android are the rich UI lock-in...
- palsecam 8y ago
  > you have to upload a package, but all that package contains is the URL for the actual app, and name and icon for the store Shameless plug: you can use https://pwa2uwp.fragara.com/ https://pwa2uwp.fragara.com/ to create such a package (an appx package), using nothing but your browser and curl.
- self_awareness 8y ago
  Actually Flutter allows to create Material apps on iOS, and iOS-themed apps on Android.
tonetheman 8y ago
This is cool but I tried yesterday to figure out what was going on in the samples and it still super green. It looks like you have to still write Android code to do this. There is a sample that has no code in it ... but it is not documented. Hopefully over time they will get the process worked out.
z3t4 8y ago
It would make a lot of sense to use Node.JS as a backend service for your web app, instead of a Java app. It's much easier for a web developer to use JavaScript then to learn Java, or Objective C. The API would be implemented with Node.JS modules.
jadbox 8y ago
Is there a way for me to tell TWA to then tell Chrome to report itself different in the meta data? There are services that I use that do not work properly when the source identifies itself as a mobile browser. Currently with Cordova, you have have it change the headers on all requests to report a different browser OS.

256 points by jbuild 8y ago

Will the developer need to give 30% of the progressive app price to Google (if it is in the play store)? sorry in advance, if this has already been mentioned somewhere.

dfabulich 8y ago
Yes. The "Trusted Web Activities" (TWA) API referenced in this article is just a convenient way to turn a web page into an Android Activity. (An Activity is a screen in an Android app.) They don't let you paste an URL into the Google Play Store and convert it to APK automagically. You still have to install Android Studio, build your app as an APK, and upload it. You could do this before by coding up a full-screen WebView, but TWA is just nicer in a number of ways. If your app is a paid app, you'll pay Google 30% of that. TWA offers no convenient way to do in-app purchases; if it did, you'd still have to pay Google 30% for those IAPs.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  > You still have to install Android Studio, build your app as an APK, and upload it. :( Not having to do that was what I was hoping for with stores allowing PWAs. Maybe it at least means that the APK only needs to be built once? If it has to be rebuilt for every release, I don't see what this offers that Cordova can't do better.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    From the article: "Is TWA a Hybrid framework, similar to Cordova? No. With Cordova or other hybrid solutions, you are typically shipping your web resources (HTML, JS, CSS, etc.) within your APK package. Also, the engine is different and isolated from the users’ browser, so no session or cache sharing. With Trusted Web Activity you don’t need to package any resource file from your PWA (only native components, in case you want them); all your resources will be downloaded and updated on the fly from your Service Worker. Your PWA will still be rendered with the installed Chrome version, sharing all storage, cache, and sessions with the browser. Therefore, if your user has a session on your website opened when the user installs the app from the Play Store, she will still be logged in. The user is just installing a shortcut to Chrome using a special mode."
    - pier25 8y ago
      So what's the point of the APK?
      - UncleMeat 8y ago
        The OS needs an APK to run it. Just opening your page in the browser won't let you customize as much.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        To contain the metadata for the store entry?
krn 8y ago
If I already have a web app with a built-in recurring subscription functionality, I shouldn't be required to abandon it just to get it published on the Google Play Store. The entire idea of allowing PWAs on Google Play Store seems to be a part of Google's wider product strategy, which includes ChromeOS and Android Go, where using a native app is not always the best choice. Microsoft Store has already been doing this for a while for a different reason: a lack of Windows alternatives to the most popular mobile apps. Apple, on the other hand, has no business case for integrating PWAs into the App Store, because they would just reduce its revenue.
- taurath 8y ago
  If they allow PWAs to get around the 30% IAP feature, then in 5 years there will be no more native apps, only PWAs. I doubt they will allow any non-google play in app purchases to take place.
  - krn 8y ago
    I think the essence of a web app is that it works on any platform. It shouldn't know anything about Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Otherwise, it's just a native app with a webview.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      They are called PWA, not WA, with P meaning Progressive. The idea is that the app should check for available browser/OS APIs that progressively enhance user's experience. And no they aren't necessarily just a native app with a webview, on UWP a store delived PWA has full access to the UWP APIs, just like .NET and C++, no need to write extra FFI manually. No need for Frankenstein solutions like Cordova. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/pwa https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps/windows-features?branch=pwa#call-winrt-apis-from-your-pwa https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-...
benologist 8y ago
You'll also be switching to a payment provider you can never contact.
- titanomachy 8y ago
  I think Google customer service has gotten better, last time I called I had a human in 3 mins or so. Not sure how useful those humans are on average, though. The one I got was helpful.
kinlan 8y ago
Team member here. You have to abide by all the rules of the store to be listed in the store.

abrowne 8y ago

> TWAs work only with Chrome today, but the API might be also cloned by other browsers, such as Samsung Internet, Edge or Firefox in the future. It's too bad it's Chrome-only now. But very good that using another engine is even possible.

osrec 8y ago

One of the wonderful things about a PWA is that it is so freeing (no app store gods to appease for approval etc etc). I'm a little afraid that putting PWAs in an app store may actually reduce the flexibility they offer by restricting what PWAs can and can't do. Then again, an app store may be a necessary to allow PWAs to diffuse into mainstream usage. Personally, I am looking forward to the day PWAs are considered on par with native apps by the general populace. I think we're getting there in terms of functionality and flexibility - I run https://usebx.com/app https://usebx.com/app which is a PWA, and my users are pretty happy with the functionality it delivers on all platforms. It also helped me launch with a smaller budget, since it's a single code base that runs on desktop, mobile or tablet. The one thing I will add is that building a high-quality, performant PWA is significantly harder than building a native app - why? because you really need to understand the workings of modern browsers to squeeze native like performance, and unfortunately, in my experience, very few web developers have that depth of understanding. I have been building web apps for 20 years (I started young), but when I decided to build Bx as a PWA, I had to learn a lot to achieve the quality I desired.

CraftThatBlock 8y ago
I think app stores are a great discovery tool for PWA. Searching for PWA in a centralize marketplace will most likely be one the tipping points of PWA, and putting amd emphasis on the "app" point. If their goal is to be the same as native apps, putting them together makes them even closer to that objective
- pasta 8y ago
  Well I find myself not using the app store anymore because it's useless to find apps. There are no filters and no way to order results. Top downloads sometimes have worse scores than indy apps that only have a hundred downloads but work much better.
dddw 8y ago
wow you're app is really nice! superfast too

thinkingemote 8y ago

Can a user have as much control over a PWA as it's running in a browser instance compared to loading the site in regular Firefox mobile? In other words are PWA a way for people to write and run web apps but making sure the user can't run adblockers?

SimeVidas 8y ago
That’s a good point. My guess is that extensions do not run when a PWA is installed and launched in standalone mode.
pjmlp 8y ago
Depends on the host OS. On Windows 10, PWAs are just another way of doing UWP native apps, as they replaced the former JavaScript language projection (WinJS) introduced in Windows 8.

jameslk 8y ago

PWAs along with Web Payments and WebAssembly seems like it will make big changes to the way the web works. It's blurring the line with web and native even further.

sridca 8y ago
I'm pretty confident that this is Google's long-term strategy and why I think chromeos will become popular in future.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Firstly it needs to move beyond an US centric market.

sandGorgon 8y ago

There has been a production TWA in the Play Store for a while now - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.mapslite https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... Works brilliantly.

quentindemetz 8y ago
I couldn't figure out how to mute voice directions during navigation

burtonator 8y ago

This is actually huge news. I'm really excited about this! I'm the author of a document management and annotation platform named Polar: https://getpolarized.io/ https://getpolarized.io/ I'm working on the web+mobile version built on Firebase. The PWA should be straight forward but don't want to have to build another mobile app for it. With PWA this is going to be 100x easier. Additionally, the Play Store is a major source of new users. One of the things most independent app developers don't think about is distribution. Being in the Play Store means people have another chance to find your app!

lucasverra 8y ago
im following your steps and waiting for web&mobile to getpolarized ! any ETA to beta test ?

int_19h 8y ago

It's amusing that Microsoft is still the one embracing PWAs most - Win10 app store allows to publish them directly (you have to upload a package, but all that package contains is the URL for the actual app, and name and icon for the store). But then there's also Bing PWA crawler which finds and adds existing apps. It's literally the reverse of early 00s, when Microsoft was entrenched with rich desktop GUIs, and everybody else was hoping that web apps would be the way out of that lock-in. And now iOS and Android are the rich UI lock-in...

palsecam 8y ago
> you have to upload a package, but all that package contains is the URL for the actual app, and name and icon for the store Shameless plug: you can use https://pwa2uwp.fragara.com/ https://pwa2uwp.fragara.com/ to create such a package (an appx package), using nothing but your browser and curl.
self_awareness 8y ago
Actually Flutter allows to create Material apps on iOS, and iOS-themed apps on Android.

tonetheman 8y ago

This is cool but I tried yesterday to figure out what was going on in the samples and it still super green. It looks like you have to still write Android code to do this. There is a sample that has no code in it ... but it is not documented. Hopefully over time they will get the process worked out.

z3t4 8y ago

It would make a lot of sense to use Node.JS as a backend service for your web app, instead of a Java app. It's much easier for a web developer to use JavaScript then to learn Java, or Objective C. The API would be implemented with Node.JS modules.

jadbox 8y ago

Is there a way for me to tell TWA to then tell Chrome to report itself different in the meta data? There are services that I use that do not work properly when the source identifies itself as a mobile browser. Currently with Cordova, you have have it change the headers on all requests to report a different browser OS.