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If targeting Android people should first consider if their app can work as a PWA. Try and do it. if you run into a deal breaking issue with PWA features, then

If targeting Android people should first consider if their app can work as a PWA. Try and do it. if you run into a deal breaking issue with PWA features, then wrap it in a minimalist app shell. Best case: everything works on Android and iOS and it's also a website. Worst case: you will end up doing some platform specific code and dealing with the app stores like you were going to do anyway. Average Case: everything will work on android and some things will be broken on iOS.

freedomben 2y ago
This really is a good way to go. The majority of apps can be a PWA just fine as long as you don't have to have an app in the Apple app store. If you need push notifications of the specific Apple variety or any other APIs that Apple doesn't think non-native apps should be able to call, then you'll hit some friction as well, but for the most part it's a pleasant delivery strategy. Even now if I need a "native" app I'm looking very seriously at React Native first before rolling two totally separate apps in different languages.
modeless 2y ago
I shipped a PWA in the Play Store. Guess what? It still got delisted because I didn't update to the latest API level or whatever. Unfortunately you can't just ship a PWA with no wrapper. You have to build a special wrapper app that hosts the PWA and you have to use Android Studio and Gradle and all that crap. Updating the wrapper is surely still easier than a whole app, but it's nontrivial and it's frustrating to still have to deal with the platform BS for a pure web app that uses no platform APIs at all. More work than I wanted to deal with for a hobby project, anyway.
- afavour 2y ago
  > Unfortunately you can't just ship a PWA with no wrapper. You can… but it won’t be in the Play Store. Disqualifying for many, but not all.
  - gnarbarian 2y ago
    this is what I do. are you really any more discoverable there? I don't think so.
    - modeless 2y ago
      I got a significant number of installs and I didn't do any promotion. People also directly requested an "app" and this satisfies them a lot more than a lecture on the steps to install a PWA.
ktosobcy 2y ago
I use most of the things as pages (miniflux, bluesky) and feel no need to install apps for them....

freedomben 2y ago

This really is a good way to go. The majority of apps can be a PWA just fine as long as you don't have to have an app in the Apple app store. If you need push notifications of the specific Apple variety or any other APIs that Apple doesn't think non-native apps should be able to call, then you'll hit some friction as well, but for the most part it's a pleasant delivery strategy. Even now if I need a "native" app I'm looking very seriously at React Native first before rolling two totally separate apps in different languages.

modeless 2y ago

I shipped a PWA in the Play Store. Guess what? It still got delisted because I didn't update to the latest API level or whatever. Unfortunately you can't just ship a PWA with no wrapper. You have to build a special wrapper app that hosts the PWA and you have to use Android Studio and Gradle and all that crap. Updating the wrapper is surely still easier than a whole app, but it's nontrivial and it's frustrating to still have to deal with the platform BS for a pure web app that uses no platform APIs at all. More work than I wanted to deal with for a hobby project, anyway.

afavour 2y ago
> Unfortunately you can't just ship a PWA with no wrapper. You can… but it won’t be in the Play Store. Disqualifying for many, but not all.
- gnarbarian 2y ago
  this is what I do. are you really any more discoverable there? I don't think so.
  - modeless 2y ago
    I got a significant number of installs and I didn't do any promotion. People also directly requested an "app" and this satisfies them a lot more than a lecture on the steps to install a PWA.

ktosobcy 2y ago

I use most of the things as pages (miniflux, bluesky) and feel no need to install apps for them....