12 ms·

I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok

• everdrive 6mo ago
  And if the only option is an app, then I'm not interested in your product / store / company.
  • Larrikin 6mo ago
    If the app can be replaced by a website the app is useless. The web is not as powerful as an app and you will miss out on emerging tech. Facebook doesn't actually need an app, but I can not unlock my door, tap to pay, or connect to a specific selection of speakers in my home on a website.
    • everdrive 6mo ago
      100% of the emerging tech you listed either allows for a hacking / warrant / data leakage risk or is else so decadent I don't know how to respond. I don't want any of it.
      • Larrikin 6mo ago
        Then all your interactions on the computer in your pocket that is more powerful than the computers that took us to the moon are just a bunch of JSON and REST calls. I will locally map out my home in 3D for renovations while you let social media dictate how you use your computer.
  • functional_dev 6mo ago
    I am with you here.. there is actually name for why companies do this. They are not pushing app because it is better, but because browser tab cannot lock you in. Mapped it out here if curious - https://vectree.io/c/enshittification-how-digital-platforms-degrade-over-time https://vectree.io/c/enshittification-how-digital-platforms-...
• denysvitali 6mo ago
  I understand the user point of view, but some web UIs nowadays are so bad and the app so good that I'm not sure this always holds true. I do agree that this seems to be exception rather than the rule - so having both is actually nice IMHO.
  • owenpalmer 6mo ago
    Alternatively, they could just make the web UI good.
    • happytoexplain 6mo ago
      This isn't an alternative for the user (the person you're replying to).
      • denysvitali 6mo ago
        I can't think of a web app that really feels like a (good) native one. For example, I would never use Google Calendar as a web app / Google Maps as a web app as they're far inferior IMHO
        • jeroenhd 6mo ago
          I used Home Assistant as a web app for years before deciding to download the companion app instead to give it access to my phone's sensors. I used to care a lot about app designs feeling "native" but when I actually took inventory of the apps I use, I came to the conclusion that all app developers (including Apple and Google themselves) will force their own designs and theming into every app. The only exception seems to be coming from a bunch of open-source apps that don't have branding concerns to worry about. With the realisation that most apps look and navigate must as bad as their website equivalent, I found it much easier to use web apps.
  • rpcope1 6mo ago
    TurboTax, for all its faults is one of those where the desktop app is better than the webapp they keep pushing.
• wbobeirne 6mo ago
  The author touches on this in the last section, but I'd reframe this a different way. The natural conclusion for a company who wants to funnel you to the app is, "the web version is a-OK? Let's make the web version worse." I'd rather see this framed as, "if you don't have a high functioning web version, I don't need to use your service." Gimping my preferred medium will lose me as a customer. If enough people draw that line, "enshittifying" your web app should hurt your metrics, not help. That way maintaining a good web version is looked at as a long-term necessity, not a top of funnel.
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
• 7777777phil 6mo ago
  This sentiment will probably resonate with a lot of people here. I literally won’t use a service if they try to force me onto their app..
  • MiddleEndian 6mo ago
    It's already been beaten into acceptance that I have to use the Ticketmaster app (shockingly awful) or Dice app (not quite as bad but still sucks) to get into a lot of music venues in Boston. But at one club they wanted me to install another app just to check my coat. I elected to hide it under a some furniture instead lol
• darepublic 6mo ago
  dozens of apps on the smartphone is gross. an indicator for me of an elderly / technically illiterate smartphone user is the presence of a ton of apps, most of which were used long ago and seldomly.
  • hooverd 6mo ago
    sounds like somebody who's never had to park in multiple cities
• cogman10 6mo ago
  I wish PWAs were more of a thing. That is actually what I'd use instead of installing a company app.
• 8cvor6j844qw_d6 6mo ago
  Web browser is a sandbox by default. Worst a sketchy site does is eat a tab, less if you run an adblocker. Native app? Background processes, hardware ID shenanigans, your contacts, location. The whole buffet.
  • Levitating 6mo ago
    Using flatpaks or mobile apps, you can view the sandbox permissions and adjust them if you have to.
  • happyopossum 6mo ago
    > your contacts, location. The whole buffet. It's not like an app is getting those without your knowledge, and many times it's useful for an app to have your contacts or location...
    • duped 6mo ago
      Almost never is it useful for an app to have my contacts or location. That said only on some platforms is it possible to stop a native app from getting them.
      • quesera 6mo ago
        Android and iOS both require user permission for apps to access contacts or location. Are there other platforms that can't even manage this basic level of user protection?
        • grumbel 6mo ago
          As long as the application is made aware of the permissions and can prevent functioning when they get denied, that doesn't really help much. It's the choice between getting mugged or never leaving the house. The ability to deny permissions without the app noticing or filling it with fake data doesn't exist on either system.
        • duped 6mo ago
• Exuma 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • charles_f 6mo ago
    I cared about the author's opinion so it's not literal, I like the article. I didn't care about your opinion though.
  • 710dev 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  • Sharlin 6mo ago
    This week's "unintentional irony" and "lack of self-awareness" awards go to...
• crsl 6mo ago
  I also find that because the web version is worse in order to push you to download the app, it is a good way to not get sucked into endlessly scrolling. Get in, do what you need, and get out because of bad experience.
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• WhiteOwlLion 6mo ago
  I use Twitter/X on web because the iOS so bad.
  • SunshineTheCat 6mo ago
    Turns out if you use brave on iOS it auto-blocks all the ads too.
• villgax 6mo ago
  The government is supposed to be pushing for web as the default.
• ryandrake 6mo ago
  I've got an old-ish phone, so in most cases, I can't download your app even if I wanted to. You deliberately set your minimum iOS deployment version to be higher than what my phone can even install. So I have to go to your web site or just stop doing business with your ass. Just because your developers decided that developing for older phones is too hard to figure out, or it takes too much effort, and they'd rather just cut us off.
  • realusername 6mo ago
    I think the blame is on Apple here, you can't support older devices even if you wanted to. (And it's the same on Android)
    • ryandrake 6mo ago
      You can support older devices, but admittedly Apple does not make it super easy to find. The easy "happy path" in Xcode is to only support the most recent OS versions.
      • mghackerlady 6mo ago
        iirc even then there's a minimum that xcode will still deploy to. The only way to have an app work on older versions than that is to not update it at all
        • iggldiggl 6mo ago
          With Android that's definitely not the case. Supporting older phones might get harder over time because you can't use any new APIs introduced in more recent OS releases, respectively always have to provide some fallback code path, and occasionally (at least if you want to publish on the Play Store) you're forced to use the new APIs, so you can't avoid the complexity of supporting both old and new APIs. Plus if you're using any dependencies, you're also bound by whatever minimum API version all your dependencies are using. (Even Google's support library – on the one hand that one does try to somewhat smooth over the API differences between various OS releases and make your life easier, but eventually it'll also drop old Android API versions – on the conservative side, but eventually it'll do.) But – if you're prepared to somehow work around all that, there's no hard cut-off, and a modern Android toolchain will still happily produce APKs that would run on by now very old phones, too. Like e.g. I've taken an old app that had initially been developed during the Android 2.x era (around 2010/11) in order to fix a few annoyances and add some features. Since I didn't do any kind of radical overhaul of the original code so far, the resulting app happily runs both on modern phones (albeit with a somewhat older look-and-feel), but also on the oldest emulator image I could still get to work on my computer (Android 2.3.3 / API10 from February 2011).
• dbvn 6mo ago
  Somehow the one feature I need to use is the one feature broken on the website... every time.
• akshatjiwan 6mo ago
  That's my stance as well. Unless the website is completely broken or the devs force me to download the app by blocking features on the website I prefer the web. With responsive design becoming mainstream I'm fine with using my browser for 90% of my internet work. In some cases like Google docs it's painful to use the web version so I just use the app. EDIT: I wish they'd add a console to mobile web browsers though.
  • jareklupinski 6mo ago
    > the website is completely broken or the devs force me to download the app by blocking features on the website for me, this is signal that i wasn't supposed to be visiting that resource in the first place
    • mcv 6mo ago
      Yeah, crippling your website in order to force users to download an app that may be able to access for of a user's data, is a clear sign that there are people you don't want to do business with. There are several sites I use regularly for which I refuse to install the app. There are a lot more sites that I visit only occasionally because someone links to it, and that site immediately wants me to download the app and refuses to show me the content that was linked to. Fuck off with that.
    • ragnese 6mo ago
      Yep. If someone is trying to make you do something, or stop doing something, or buy something, your first question should always be "Why?". Why would someone try to force me off of my browser (that has ad-blocking and tracker-blocking mitigations) and on to a locked-down app that may want permission to run in the background, display notifications, access my files or camera, etc? Maybe it really is to "improve my experience"... yeah, right.
  • mrd3v0 6mo ago
    > Unless the website is completely broken or the devs force me to download the app by blocking features That's already the norm.
• jedberg 6mo ago
  While I sympathize with the author, and feel the same way, I think Apple/Google have some blame here. They make certain simple things only possible in the apps, because the APIs are not exposed via the web. Notifications is a big obvious one. Not sure if they've changed it since I last looked into it, but having an app installed was the only way to send a notification to someone for a long time.
  • dyarosla 6mo ago
    Apple still doesnt give you the right dimensions for a page that switches between portrait and landscape.
  • plagiarist 6mo ago
    That's one of the main reasons to not install an app. Extremely few apps are able to limit their notifications to actually transactional events. As soon as they have the capability they start spamming away.
  • KellyCriterion 6mo ago
    Reg. Notifications: Isnt there are similar feature in iOS browser as in Firefox these "desktop notifications" that some webpages request?
  • Lihh27 6mo ago
    > having an app installed was the only way to send a notification that used to be true, especially on ios. but web push has existed there for a while now for home screen web apps. so that explains some of the history... doesn't really excuse today's habit of shipping the web as a second-class client.
    • graemep 6mo ago
      Do people allow website notifications? One argument I have heard raised in favour of mobile apps is that people are more likely to give an app notification permission.
  • wky 6mo ago
• lcfcjs6 6mo ago
  [dead]
• peterspath 6mo ago
  I have it the other way around. I want local first app. Don’t want everything in the cloud apps. Luckily there is choice :)
  • dhedberg 6mo ago
    I take this to be mainly about cloud services that can/could just as well be used in the browser instead, and where installing the app doesn't really allow you to meaningfully use it offline anyway. It's largely orthogonal to the question of local apps vs cloud services.
• jcalvinowens 6mo ago
  It's a waste of resources too. I've seen startups waste soooooo much time and effort on simple native apps that could trivially be webviews, it's tragic.
• chistev 6mo ago
  My Google Chrome app is by far the most used app on my phone. If you catch me at a random moment on my phone, chances are I'm on Chrome. Sometimes the mobile app experience is better than the mobile browser for me, though. Examples are Twitter, Spotify, Upwork, Google Keep Notes. If I'm on my computer I don't even download the apps, I just use the browser. It just feels more convenient. I haven't thought much about why they all feel good on my laptop browser while some apps offer better experience on mobile. Edit: It's also why I keep procrastinating on getting into mobile app development. I just generally prefer web experience. With some exceptions as already stated here.
  • chistev 6mo ago
    I take back my comment on Twitter being better on mobile apps. I just tried it on my mobile browser and it doesn't have that stupid bug (feature?) where you leave the detail page of a tweet and the app automatically takes you to the top and you miss where you were initially.
• appsoftware 6mo ago
  I don't understand it from the app developers point of view. Having to pay app store cuts over basic card processing fees. I understand the appeal of access to a market, like selling on eBay gets you eyeballs. But once you have a customer using their app, what does the app give you that a PWA doesn't unless you need access to specific sensors / file system access patterns etc?
  • chistev 6mo ago
    Don't you need a certain level of convincing for the average person to use a PWA?
  • rickdg 6mo ago
    For years, Apple has muffled PWAs under a pillow. No one knows that you can add them to your homescreen or how that unlocks the possibility of getting push notifications. You also lose any stored data when you go from Safari to an homescreen web app.
    • KellyCriterion 6mo ago
      I guess this is by intention since with a PWA you would have "near app experience" but for free?
      • appsoftware 6mo ago
        That sounds likely
    • bombcar 6mo ago
      How do you add them? I am using https://actualbudget.org https://actualbudget.org as a Safari page, and it works surprisingly well when "off network" - but a button on the home screen would be nicer.
      • appsoftware 6mo ago
        Like this apparently - in 6 steps. I have a PWA app planned, I was hoping I could write some easy instructions for each platform. There's likely to be some drop of with iOS though if the user has to navigate through all of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1nlwu0m/it_now_takes_6_taps_to_install_a_pwa_on_ios/ https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1nlwu0m/it_now_take... It's anti-competitive for sure
• empyrrhicist 6mo ago
  If a website disrespects "request desktop site" and still tries to force you into an app... ugh. Had this happen yesterday when someone sent me a link to something on AllTrails. If the service was good and the website was usable, I might have even considered getting the app for offline features. Not anymore - screw companies that do this.
  • tannedNerd 6mo ago
    Why though? If only 1% of your user base is accessing your maps through the website, you aren’t going to keep supporting it.
    • empyrrhicist 6mo ago
      I described my own attitude, obviously companies are going to do what they want. In this case, AllTrails has a perfectly functional website which they allow users to access from computer web browsers, but they force mobile phones (even when in "request desktop site" mode) to redirect to the app. If a site breaks in that mode it's on the user - I'm specifically requesting to get access to something they already provide and being denied. This is especially egregious given how many "apps" are just websites in a wrapper anyway. I think that sucks, and I'm entitled to my opinion. Now get off my lawn.
• Gimpei 6mo ago
  My gripe is how iOS allows these companies to constantly bug us to use their stupid apps. I ended up installing the NYTimes app, not because I use it, but just to shut it up. I switched to duck duck go because I was sick of being bugged to install chrome. How many times do I need to say no?
  • chistev 6mo ago
    So that's how she feels about me?
• tannedNerd 6mo ago
  This also skips over with some hand waving that a lot of mobile app uses cases simply can’t be replicated with web sites. Take gps or smart home control as two easy of the top of my head example the author skipped too. Also the fact that people here would rather have their info stored in the cloud vs local on device is interesting.
  • ssiddharth 6mo ago
    I do mention cases where the browser model doesn't work, like accessing Lidar sensors. Just didn't want to bloat the post with too many examples. But I totally agree with you on this front: not everything can be done as a PWA.
• moffers 6mo ago
  It’s a little tough these days. With AI and scraping, running an open webapp/website is now more expensive than ever before. My friends and I have launched a product in the last few months and decided to focus on mobile first and wait to develop a webapp simply because we couldn’t feel we could optimize the costs of open webapp while we have so few resources.
  • KellyCriterion 6mo ago
    Before AI I regularly consumed a larger international news aggregator ran by a single person. Then with ChatGPT he had to enshittify his website with all these cloudflare capture stuff, making the site leeesssssssss fun to use; when complaining he mailed me that AI scrapers are slashing his servers
  • EMM_386 6mo ago
    How expensive can it be? I just randomly looked at Railway and for $20 a month you get a whole lot. I've hosted many a web project (successful personal projects and enterprise projects alike) and I don't see a large barrier to entry on "hosting a website" here. Blocking AI scrapers and crawlers is not a huge ordeal. Planning for a unicorn before just putting a product up isn't the way to go. https://railway.com/pricing https://railway.com/pricing
    • mrweasel 6mo ago
      > Blocking AI scrapers and crawlers is not a huge ordeal. If you have content they want, then it is a huge ordeal. You can pay some one like CloudFlare to take care of it for you, but if you can't or won't make a deal with those types of companies, it's going to take up a significant chunk of your time.
• simonw 6mo ago
  A few years ago I had an interesting experience at a company where I was working on a new prototype iPhone app and asked people around the office to install it... and a surprising number of people didn't want to do it because their phone was full already and they didn't want to delete photos in order to try a new app. Made me realize that for a lot of people who get cheaper phones with less storage installing a new app is actually a pretty big decision.
  • ben_w 6mo ago
    I should've thought of that, given how often I offload photos from my phone to my mac, but somehow this didn't even cross my mind before now, so thanks for sharing the anecdote :)
• raverbashing 6mo ago
  One very egregious example: Moovit Even with mobile FF and adblock their mobile website is completely unusable. Now ask me if I'm happy to download ther app if their website is a complete POS like that The desktop website works "fine" for the most part though
• KellyCriterion 6mo ago
  What most people dont get: Most of folks on HN here are much older than todays "first customers" of 16y/17/18 For them: The "Smartphone is the internet", while for most of us the "Smartphone is an extension of the internet from our desktops" that we were used to (remember the years before dot com bubble, saying: "I will be down in the basement at the computer to surf on the net little bit" ? :-) But today, the very first touchpoint with "the internet" for younger folks is a smartphone display. The even do homework on this small screens! Companies are seeing this switch, so they adapt. Personally, a service which is "only an app" will be not used by me as I prefer to have a larger screen with more information (actually I use my mobile phone only when Im in public transport or similar, at home I have a notebook laying around if I need something)
  • karimf 6mo ago
    This. I posted this on my other comment, but there's a meme that "Gen Z Kids Don't Understand How File Systems Work" [0]. There seems to be a disconnect between some developers and the younger folks. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526
    • mghackerlady 6mo ago
      I can say for certain this is true. People my age look at me like I have 3 heads if I ask them to do anything more complex than open a web browser
      • quaintdev 6mo ago
        I'm in India, people give me same looks when I ask them to open browser. Internet to my parents and other old folks is YouTube and WhatsApp
        • FabHK 6mo ago
          Famously, there were surveys where people said they used Facebook, but didn't use the internet... https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...
• ArchieScrivener 6mo ago
  Stop asking me for access to my contacts, microphone, location, or permission to send me 5 kinds of useless notifications.
• tbolt 6mo ago
  Agree with the article. I’m increasingly jaded by the state of the web. Something that has been happening for a long time on iOS Safari that I only recently realized: pinch to zoom on sites like Reddit, instagram, shopping sites, and many others cause what I’m calling “website seizures.” Where I try to zoom in and half the time the page reloads completely or triggers a reload but ends up throwing an error.
  • narag 6mo ago
    Ouch! Netscape 4.7 reloaded...
• karimf 6mo ago
  This is my stance as well, but keep in mind that a lot of people have the opposite preference. They didn't grow up with the world wide web. They only started using technology when Android and iPhone was popular. They only know Whatsapp, Youtube, TikTok. They're not used to using the browser. There's a meme that "Gen Z Kids Don't Understand How File Systems Work" [0] So, it'll depend on your target audiences. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526
  • mghackerlady 6mo ago
    There's a reason the "small web" is having a revival among these kids, because they increasingly haven't experienced a real web to begin with. Circa ~2010, the web effectively died in the mainstream since Google decided it wasn't worth showing. Platforms become a thing, and despite being web-based, are practically their own intranets that use the web as a cross platform zero install delivery platform
  • ragnese 6mo ago
    When you say "meme", it sounds like it might not be true. But, a few years ago I handed my stepson a USB flash drive with some files on it, he plugged it into his laptop and the very first thing he did was launch Google Chrome and then not have any clue what to do to access the files (it was a Windows laptop).
• happytoexplain 6mo ago
  My experience might be the minority, but I have found that 95% of the time, when an app is available on both web and native mobile, the native mobile version is significantly better - usually not because it's a fantastic app or has more features, but rather because the web version is more buggy/slow/confusing. Whether I prefer an app to be web or native is purely based on the use case (I probably would choose native for a dozen use cases and web for the remaining one million use cases), but that's orthogonal to the fact of which one is actually better. Edit: And to be clear, I'm not referring to cases where the web app is purposefully restricted or injected with dark patterns to drive users to native. Even if you ignore those cases, this pattern still stands in my experience. Though, that doesn't mean there is no indirect quality bias, e.g. more money spent on the native devs than the web devs.
  • Vachyas 6mo ago
    Yea, webapps (even PWAs) still can't compete with native apps when it comes to responsiveness, but I still don't know why. I've yet to see even a demo PWA that passes the "native turing test" where I can't tell whether it's a native app or not. Even native apps that were built with cross-platform frameworks feel a bit "off" sometimes.
    • bguebert 6mo ago
      I feel like its because other than the user, the people involved have a benefit to running native instead of as a webapp. The phone OS companies get their percent of apps developed in their stores and the app developers get better access to your data to resell. Apple in particular has been really hostile to webapps.
    • Zopieux 6mo ago
      Can't relate. Except for Google Maps and Docs, I can't think of a native app that couldn't be a WebView. Hell, most of them are anyway! The worst kind is French banking apps or IBKR app: many features are native, but then because of some weird tech debt or incompetent tech leadership, they'll sometimes show you web pages in a shitty, slow, completely different UI-wise built-in WebView for mundane tasks like downloading a PDF statement.
• cute_boi 6mo ago
  We should blame Apple for creating incentives that let it take a 30% cut from apps. I don't know why governments, especially foreign governments, allow Apple app store to operate in their countries.
• senfiaj 6mo ago
  Sometimes apps lack the features of the web versions. For example, I wanted to translate a document on Android. When I was trying to open Google translator website, the system was redirecting me to the app. Unfortunately, I couldn't see document translation feature in this app. Could still open the website in incognito mode. This is really maddening me.
  • jeffbee 6mo ago
    Strava is an example where to enjoy all the features of the platform you have to use the app for some and the browser for others. Neither has all of them.
• tuckerman 6mo ago
  The site that irks me the most here is New York Times. Opening an article in the mobile browser often has a toast over the bottom third of the article to open it in their app for "a better experience". I struggle to think how nytimes isn't a perfect fit for a site over an app. The only frustrating experience I have with the web version that would be better in the app is not seeing that that pop-up.
  • cush 6mo ago
    NYT occasionally uses fancy interactive articles. They have games, and other things that are better on the app. The NYT app is actually very good
    • adzm 6mo ago
      Every time I end up trying an app for things like this, I end up missing tabs.
      • tcoff91 6mo ago
        There is no reason they can’t have a native tab navigator. It kills me that Google maps app doesn’t have tabs.
      • cush 6mo ago
        Yeah true. Tabs, history, etc on the browser are unparalleled.
    • tuckerman 6mo ago
      For games I agree that an app makes sense (though I think at least the games I used to play were in a separate nyt games app). For interactive articles, I've not seen anything I couldn't use fine in my browser, but in theory I wouldn't mind covering up the interactive part with a "Open in the app for a better experience" button (similar to what YouTube does on the video portion of the page). Where I encounter this though is in standard, text-heavy articles that maybe include a photo or two. I assume the reason they are pushing me to the app is that it benefits them not me (longer dwell times, maybe easier tracking for behavior/ads), and that is precisely why I want to stay in the browser. Covering up a good portion of the article and preventing me from scrolling until I click the tiny link to decline is hostile and is the only thing degrading the experience on the website for most articles I read.
• bcrescimanno 6mo ago
  Obligatory Dennis Reynolds / It's Always Sunny... thoughts on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzb355qT8RI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzb355qT8RI I honestly don't mind downloading apps for things I use all the time so long as the app isn't a nightmare. It's when I am having a single interaction with a brand (such as buying my wife a gift) and I'm bombarded with "it's better in the app" that drives me nuts. I realize that I am perhaps not the target demographic of this app-centric culture; but, I cannot count the number of times in a week that I utter the phrase, "no, I don't want to download your app" as I try to accomplish what should be a simple task.
• Devasta 6mo ago
  The web version being ok is a sign of the degradation of the desktop experience more than it is a sign of the capabilities of the web.
• rvz 6mo ago
  PWAs are dead.
  • rchaud 6mo ago
    PWAs make little sense at this point as most apps are useless without an active internet connection. You can't cache Uber ride searches, Amazon product listings or food delivery options.
• brianzelip 6mo ago
  gmail on mobile is particularly insidious in this context.
• sowbug 6mo ago
  Still holding my breath for the app that puts up a dialog on every launch asking "would you like to try our web version?"
• amusingimpala75 6mo ago
  How much of the native app push is to bypass ad blockers? If you’re just using a browser plugin like AdGuard or uBO it can’t block in a dedicated app unless you replace it with AGH or PiHole, can’t help but wonder if that plays a role as well
  • davebren 6mo ago
    As a developer web never really felt like real programming to me, because it wasn't designed to be when browsers were just displaying html pages. So it took an evolving set of hacks to get something like web applications running.
  • aembleton 6mo ago
    I expect a lot of people who run adblockers on mobile, also configure their DNS or use a VPN to block ads. On Android, you can't even get an adblocker on Chrome, which is the browser most users and using.
• beardyw 6mo ago
  There is also the lack of support for bookmarks. I value the ability to reach a part I am interested in quickly. When Chrome started supporting PWAs you couldn't bookmark the content at all. They seem to have fixed that now.
• amelius 6mo ago
  Can't we run Android inside a browser these days? WASM should be able to handle it now, I suppose.
• sergiotapia 6mo ago
  Mostly I am quite tired of the 30 step onboarding funnel all apps have. I was trying out a fitness app and the second I opened it, I was about step 9 into it and I just deleted the app.
  • fer 6mo ago
    Only to find a paywall after going through all the hoops. I'd install an app to slap whoever made that decision.
• cush 6mo ago
  It depends. The parking app example is an example of an app I want, for so many reasons
• VirgilShelton 6mo ago
  Yes and now I use AI to build any website which locks me into their workflow and run it locally how I choose!
• prosaic-hacker 6mo ago
  I will cast my vote for mobile websites over apps on phones. For personal choice reasons I have always had a "budget" phone with less memory and storage (and less cost) than a flagship phone. I also kept them running for years. At the end of the cycle I can barely run the base phone let alone the menagerie of apps the world would like me to run. I have opted out of app only service such as a Loyalty programs that forced me to transfer point from a partner only if I installed an app on my phone. They have enough info on me from purchase, they don't need more. (I even offer my card to strangers in the grocery cash if they did not have the loyalty card so they would get a discount and I would get a list of products I never buy in my loyalty list. Its a small, willful act of rebellion )
  • wisemanwillhear 6mo ago
    I decided to operate on a older budget phone for a while when my phone died outside of my planned budget and timeline for replacing it. By far the greatest problem was managing storage space. Except for core productivity apps, if a website option wasn't offered I was never going to be one of their users.
  • troupo 6mo ago
    > I will cast my vote for mobile websites over apps on phones. For personal choice reasons I have always had a "budget" phone with less memory and storage (and less cost) than a flagship phone. I also kept them running for years. Then, unfortunately, apps are a better choice for such phones (unless the app itself is just a thin webview wrapper). These days too many websites would fry a budget phone. Obligatory: The Performance Inequality Gap https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-2026/ https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-...
• 63stack 6mo ago
  Yes you will download the app because we will not offer a web version.
  • bigstrat2003 6mo ago
    No, in that case I won't do business with you.
    • 63stack 6mo ago
      Unfortunately you won't be able to submit any expenses then, because the company uses this other company who only offers an app for accounting.
• MetaWhirledPeas 6mo ago
  Browsers don't allow notifications if you don't have the site open. Browser ads can get blocked by browser extensions. Browsers make it harder to have an icon for a site/service directly on the home screen. Browsers make it harder to get extensive permissions. Browsers allow content to displayed without first being run through an approval process. For companies these are all downsides but for me they are all upsides. It really is us vs them when it comes to apps vs browsers. The only reason they offer websites at all is out of fear of losing a big chunk of users.
  • jeroenhd 6mo ago
    Browsers most definitely do allow for notifications if you don't have the site open. I use that feature all the time and it works perfectly. Google Chrome does seem to catch spam sites that abuse notification permissions to send ads, though, so for a certain category of crapware websites aren't an option.
    • MetaWhirledPeas 6mo ago
      Darn as I wrote that I doubted myself.
• 1970-01-01 6mo ago
  My analog is something along the lines of "please build a small room in your house, closet-sized at first, but with enough room to grow to twice that as we add features, so we can give you the best possible temperature and weather information. Also, we need access to your full contacts so you can share how you feel about the weather more easily, with just a push! Also also, we need a hot microphone in your closet, so you can shop our umbrella store by just talking to our AI assistant! Also also also, your privacy is important to us." It only needs to be "an app" if it is using hardware to do it's main job. There is never another reason to make it an app.
  • foresto 6mo ago
    > It only needs to be "an app" if it is using hardware to do it's main job. Even then, there's a good chance that web a API exists for the required hardware, so it still doesn't need to be an app.
• pitbred 6mo ago
  We're all here debating the friction of downloading apps versus the convenience of the mobile web, but we might be missing the bigger picture. Both are UI-heavy paradigms designed for humans to click things. In a few years, we won't care if a service has a slick React app or a native iOS build. We’ll just tell our AI agents: 'Book that flight' or 'Fix my billing issue,' and they’ll talk to the APIs directly. The era of 'interfaces for humans' is peaking; the era of 'headless services for agents' is just beginning. Interfaces are becoming a legacy tax.
  • madeofpalk 6mo ago
    Maybe. You’ll need to overcome DoorDash not wanting to give up the UI as a chance to upsell services.
    • pitbred 6mo ago
      [dead]
  • threatofrain 6mo ago
    Explanation and summarization without visual interactables is so much harder to do. A person can talk to an interface but I don't know how many people would like natural language back.
• Alexzoofficial 6mo ago
  [dead]
• _blk 6mo ago
  The whole premise doesn't make much sense (to me) if the app doesn't have an inherent benefit over a website. Don't tell me that all the app first people would rather have a web wrapped app for every website they visit? Seems to be more of a "we can get more metrics out of app users than website users" thing so they intentionally break the mobile website to aggressively push an app. #LinkedIn #Facebook
• jesterson 6mo ago
  The only reason they want you to download their app is to farm more data about you. They will push you to huge extent just to collect more data. To share an egregious example, Mercury (which is a great bank) sent KYC notice literally saying "we noticed you use app outside of declared locations" for one of my friends companies. And yes they push their app hard.
• user070707 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• asah 6mo ago
  Folding phones are the big/small screen compromise. One you fold, nobody goes back. The samsung fold7 in particular is the same thickness/weight as slab phones, but unfolds to become a tablet. Please don't vote if you haven't held one. The compromise is cost, durability (dust, water), some battery life & some camera. Huge gains in productivity and night-to-day difference consuming video and photos. Google Maps FTW.
  • kjkjadksj 6mo ago
    Still runs the kneecapped mobile os
  • craftkiller 6mo ago
    > durability (dust, water) Not just dust and water but folding screens are plastic with a mohs hardness of 2-3, as opposed to normal phones with glass screens which are a 6-7 hardness. I like having phones that can't be permanently damaged by pressing my fingernail a little hard into it. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hgg4YEdPak&t=140s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hgg4YEdPak&t=140s Another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uS90jakOuw&t=107s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uS90jakOuw&t=107s I also can trivially replace the screen on my regular phone at home, whereas I'd have to get a folding phone professionally repaired for many hundreds of dollars.
• micromacrofoot 6mo ago
  Many many people are downloading the apps, and this is pushing a lot of younger people into apps-first over native web experiences. I think we should call on Apple and Google to make web apps/sites a more first-class experience, rather than ask app developers to stop going where the people are.
• parpfish 6mo ago
  On one hand, I don’t know why startups make apps. It requires more devs and keeping everything at parity is tough with desktop, iOS, android, mobile web. Seems pragmatic to just simplify and use web. But on the other hand, I’d love to pay you $0.99 if it meant I could get an ad free version of your little widget and I’m not sure how to do that easily with web
• arnvald 6mo ago
  I actually enjoy having mobile apps for lots of use cases – travel, news, entertainment, utility bills, banking. I have probably around 100 apps on my iPhone right now and I'm fine with this number. There are 2 things though that make me dislike mobile apps. First, regularly logging me out. It's so frustrating, especially if the app does not support biometric login. I have a password manager, so I can log in rather quickly, but I just want to be logged in for months. Second, webviews, I just can't understand mobile apps that render part of their content inside webviews. Like, either commit to having a proper native mobile experience or just let me use your website. One of the more annoying cases for me personally is NBA app. I'm searching for some stat, I open their website in a browser, it redirects me to the app, the app opens and then renders the same web page in a web view. What's even the point?!
• robshippr 6mo ago
  This is especially true for dev tools. Engineers already have 20 browser tabs open with dashboards, CI/CD, docs, and logs. The last thing anyone wants is another Electron app eating RAM in the background. The best tools meet you where you already are.
• choward 6mo ago
  I'm not going to download an app for every company I do business with. It's as simple as that. I'm not going to download an app to order food from your restaurant. I'm not going to download an app to operate an appliance. I'm not going to download an app to get a discount on a beverage at your convenience store. I don't care about your stupid rewards system for trying to get a reasonable price on overpriced items. I'm not downloading an app for it. There are many people who download every app they do business with without hesitation. It's crazy. I can't imagine how many apps these people have on their phones.
• Invictus0 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• alex1138 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• nathan_compton 6mo ago
  I don't get apps. Apart from Audible, I don't have any installed and don't use any. I've never enjoyed using smartphones to do anything.
• bryankaplan 6mo ago
  If the elevator was invented today, use of it would require an app which demands access to one’s contacts and microphone, and has a rating of 1.4 stars.
• blabla_bla 6mo ago
  I got the entire idea from the title, no need for the article 's body. And when I started reading I got bored after a few paragraphs since, again, I already got the idea. Do we really need more than a title for these articles?
• ape4 6mo ago
  Can the "app" just load the mobile website. Then everyone is happy?
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• pcorsaro 6mo ago
  I've been running a video game collection site for years. The number one request I get from people is to build an app. I've worked so hard on making the mobile version of the site to be just as functional as the desktop version, and I don't really understand why people want an app over just using the web version. I sometimes wonder if I should just do it to see if I'm missing out on market share, but I don't really want to have to maintain two different user interfaces.
  • sloum 6mo ago
    You could add features to make it a PWA and explain to users how to save it t their desktop. I used ProtonMail for years that way (I do not have a smartphone anymore, so no longer do so).
  • quesera 6mo ago
    Similar situation here. My take on it is that frequent users perceive apps as desktop launchers/shortcuts. They don't care about the difference between app and web, per se, but the bookmarking situation in mobile browsers is awful (desktop too, honestly), and an app presents a convenient launcher for the service/site/data they want. Adding a springboard launcher for a PWA is easy but still apparently more frictional than installing an app.
  • mixtureoftakes 6mo ago
    building and maintaining a simple webview app might be easier than you think. if you ever end up making one im very very curious about how much market share that would gain
• yieldcrv 6mo ago
  what's funnier is that this could have been written 10 years ago and the situation was the exact same apps function more so as a checkbox for investors to take an organization seriously, as well as for the founder to self aggrandize and feel like their own app store presence means something. for devs it is functionally a make-work program.
• AstroBen 6mo ago
  Do you really think developers are going through the hellish pain of dealing with Google and Apple for no reason? Real world users prefer and expect apps as opposed to web versions for many product categories.
• agdexai 6mo ago
  The restaurant QR menu situation is peak 'we installed an app for the app' energy. I scanned a code expecting a menu and instead got a Play Store redirect. Just let me see the food. The worst offenders are services that literally work fine in mobile Safari but pop a banner saying 'for the best experience download our app' covering half the screen. The web version is already the app, you just painted a door on the wall.
  • zvitiate 6mo ago
    > The restaurant QR menu situation is peak 'we installed an app for the app' energy. I scanned a code expecting a menu and instead got a Play Store redirect. Just let me see the food. Now you've triggered me lol. At that point I'll ask for a physical menu, and leave if they don't have one. And no, I'm not going to look at my friend's phone. It's ridiculous!
• rkhaniukov 6mo ago
  I like apps, much better then web version experience
• picsao 6mo ago
  [dead]
• bbminner 6mo ago
  I asked the same question a few years ago, and the answer I arrived at is that the app has, by default, more permissions (not only technical but also conventional) to collect data, send push notifications, and otherwise harass the user.
  • tcoff91 6mo ago
    iOS apps have to request permission from user to send push and for basically every other problematic permission.
    • saltcured 6mo ago
      I'm only familiar with Android, and it bothers me that I cannot exert complete sandbox control over every app. I think I should be able to completely cut it off from the network and/or local storage; prevent it from running even though it is installed; and prevent it from having any personalizing information about me, my movements, my network connectivity status or patterns, my device usage (i.e. screen on versus locked, any proxy like battery state of charge), etc. I am very reluctant to install apps because I see that the platform is designed for needs and a mindset that is not my own. I do not see it as essential or preferable that an app be able to monetize my usage or really gather any telemetry at all.
      • fer 6mo ago
        In terms of the usual data collection, I'm very happy with TrackerControl[0]. It's basically meant to run as an always on VPN (it isn't one) which allows it to block ads, social media, trackers, etc with quite reasonable granularity. I'm surprised at the amount of apps that fail to work correctly unless they have access to their data harvesting endpoints. In terms for pure access to the data/permissions, GrapheneOS seems to be the main (only?) choice. The default permissions apps get in current day Android allow to group activities and tie them to a single user across apps/sites. [0]https://f-droid.org/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.fdroid/ https://f-droid.org/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.fdro...
• b8 6mo ago
  I trust the chrome sandbox and security more than a desktop or phone app.
• alunchbox 6mo ago
  Preach brother
• wg0 6mo ago
  I think app stores are getting restrictive and their next attack would be on PWA because that's one loophole in their walled garden where they need to extract 30% cut. Only a matter of time. As for me, I would be mostly relying on PWAs. Being a smaller company, try pushing an app to production on Android. Good luck with that.
• runjake 6mo ago
  I specifically do this with apps like Discord, because it seemed like every time I launched the app, there was a 200mb+ update. I can just use the web version instead and skip all that, along with the memory usage (for the most part).
  • Jaxan 6mo ago
    I find it so annoying that certain apps update every single time I open them. Why can’t they build something more stable?
    • runjake 6mo ago
      Because, CI[1] and "Move fast and break things" 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration
  • johanyc 6mo ago
    I do the same with discord. Idk why the app is so huge
• bedroom_jabroni 6mo ago
  Anecdotally had the axios maintainer used the Zoom desktop app, he'd be used to seeing the "Open this link in the app" prompt on the call page and less likely to fall for the scam upon not seeing the same prompt when following the phishing link. I think there's some value in having the app installed for the extra validation.
• doug_durham 6mo ago
  I'm a huge supporter of the open web. However this issue was decided 16 year ago. If you recall the first push on smartphones were "web apps". Those sucked. The bottom line is that native apps provide a better user experience and that is why they became prevalent 16 years ago.
  • Flere-Imsaho 6mo ago
    I feel the same. Take the Telegram app as an example: it's so slick, responsive. Even a simple button click doesn't work well on the web due to the long response time between clicking and seeing a response. Additionally, apps allow for good offline functionality (for times when you're not near a cell tower), which I feel is important even with ubiquitous internet access in the 1st world. The solution I feel is to have better sandboxing functionality in mobile Operating Systems.
• ryguz 6mo ago
  [dead]
• josephcsible 6mo ago
  Hall of shame: * Reddit won't let you read "unreviewed" content on mobile web (but will on desktop web) * PayPal won't let you pick your 5% rewards category, or set up balance auto-replenish without their app * Robinhood Banking won't let you see your credit card statement or pay your balance without their app * Instagram won't let you share posts as stories without their app * SeatGeek won't let you attend events without their app (no will call, mailed tickets, print at home, or mobile web)
  • dudu24 6mo ago
    old.reddit.com
    • cainxinth 6mo ago
      I've been on reddit since the beginning. If they kill old.reddit, I'm gone.
      • nosioptar 6mo ago
        Red reader is another option to make reddit usable. https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader
      • lelandfe 6mo ago
        I fully expect it to get retired in the wake of the forthcoming de-anonymization of the web. But I’m frankly shocked they haven’t already given how aggressively bad the “new” one has become.
      • ProllyInfamous 6mo ago
        After abandoning all my reddit accounts [1] (some back into the aughties), I eventually found hackernews. Here is now the only place online which I write publicly. Still, I love sharing tips for navigating reddit (you can do these without logging in): 1) old.reddit.com allows you to use Reddit's built-in link shortener, e.g. To link to today's top post (<https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1seo5rj/cafe_in_brazil_not_serving_us_or_israeli_citizens/ https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1seo5rj/cafe_in_brazi...>), you can just write ` https://old.reddit.com/1seo5rj https://old.reddit.com/1seo5rj ` [this does not work without old.] 2) you can string multiple subreddits together using the ` + ` operator, e.g. <https://old.reddit.com/r/dogs+cats+fish https://old.reddit.com/r/dogs+cats+fish> to view /r/dogs + /r/cats +/r/fish in a single stream/webpage ---- [1] in 2021; Dear /u/Spez: my promise given after your US Congressional testimony/fabrication... remains promised. —Rita/mod/bayarea
• docheinestages 6mo ago
  An app could offer a more stable identifier compared to an in-browser guest session which might have its cookies cleared.
• kogasa240p 6mo ago
  Agreed, if you have a website I'll just use that.
• hyperific 6mo ago
  See also https://idiallo.com/blog/dont-download-apps https://idiallo.com/blog/dont-download-apps
• K0IN 6mo ago
  [dead]
• firefoxd 6mo ago
  Last year the same idea made it to the front page [0]. I understand that the apps can be faster, or easier to use. But that's intentional. Developers are deliberately making the web experience worst to force you to use the app. The reason is they have control over the experience in the apps. For example, blocking ads on the apps is much harder, and they can extract things like your contacts, GPS data, and run in the background. At this point, the only apps on my phone are bank apps. Even that is something I'm trying to get rid off. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44689059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44689059
  • BostonFern 6mo ago
    Tougher adblocking is the best argument I’ve heard.
• asow92 6mo ago
  I will not download them on a train, I will not download them on a plane, I will not download them in a box, I will not download them with Firefox. I will not download them Sam I am.
• Afftar 6mo ago
  Yes, the TC is right and I completely agree, but we all know the reason for forcing users to install an app: retention, ARPU and other metrics grow for this audience, and push notifications also help with that.
• joshstrange 6mo ago
  The sad reality is people _want_ apps and the people paying for web/apps to be built also want apps (even before we talk about tracking/ad-blocking reasons). I too love the web, but throughout my career the idea of web-first/web-only has been DOA. There is some level of perceived prestige from having an app. I've told this story countless times but on multiple occasions I've written cross-platform apps using web technology. Throughout the development process, I have urged or even begged the stakeholders to try out the web-based version on their phone. It's almost identical. You just see the browser chrome in the web version. And yet it's not until I provide native builds that some people will even bother to look at. I provide web interfaces as part of the package but I could probably skip that and no one would bat an eye (I won't though, it's practically free to do that alongside the native apps and I prefer it). There are a handful of things you can only do, or only do well, in an app so I do understand that argument. Also, I find some PWA-advocates to clearly not be living in reality: "You can do X in a PWA" - only if you hate yourself and enjoy silly limitations that clients do not and will not understand or care about ("Just make it work, an app can do this!").
  • marxisttemp 6mo ago
    Why is it sad to want an app?
  • nitwit005 6mo ago
    > The sad reality is people _want_ apps I went to a gas station and they had someone offering to pay customers if they'd install their app. Discount gas for X months. No one seemed interested. People do want apps for things they do quite often, but that's mostly social media or video games. The hassle of install and account setup simply exceeds the benefit of rarely used apps.
• alejandrosplitt 6mo ago
  [dead]
• marxisttemp 6mo ago
  I won’t use your web app. The app version has better performance, lower memory usage, is more idiomatic and looks better.
• dyingkneepad 6mo ago
  I wish there was a version of this website that was simpler, more educated and that I could show to the "normies" who own business and insist on asking me to download their app (I'm looking at you, TKD school!). This one is too aimed at the cooks.
• theturtle 6mo ago
  [dead]
• k26dr 6mo ago
  The Politico website on Android has this issue. Can't login so can't read articles. Had to download app, but would prefer web page.
• CephalopodMD 6mo ago
  I'm okay with downloading your app provided it's actually good and does something substantially better than a website could do. I'm talking seamless mobile UI, use of mobile features like gps or nfc, or easier/better security and authentication. However, I don't want your bloated or minimum effort dog-shit app just to watch a movie on a plane, browse a site like Reddit, order a pizza, read a news article/blog, or shop at your specific online store. I will begrudgingly download it if I must, but I'll hate you for it.
• KoolKat23 6mo ago
  I at times wonder if my life would be easier if I were not so stubborn and just installed every app suggested along the way.
• krb5 6mo ago
  The cookie/session isolation is underrated. Half the reason services push you to the app is because the mobile browser experience for juggling multiple web apps is genuinely bad — not because the web can't do it, but because nobody's made it comfortable. I got annoyed enough to put together a small webview manager that keeps a few web apps in tabs with separate cookies: https://github.com/theoden8/webspace_app https://github.com/theoden8/webspace_app (yes, it's written in flutter)
• gonzalohm 6mo ago
  I would be fine having an app for everything if: 1. Phone storage wasn't paid at an absurdly premium price. Sometimes the option with just higher storage may be $300 more. 2. High speed Internet was available cheaply everywhere. If I'm in a town in the middle of nowhere. I'm not going to use my expensive data plan (because in the US mobile data is extremely expensive compared to EU) To download a 500Mb app that will take 5 minutes to download because the Internet is slow just to pay for parking
  • jeroenhd 6mo ago
    For some reason, app sizes seem to have exploded, but especially on iPhones. Maybe it's the fact cheap Androids are still being used but I was surprised to find out how many 50MB Android apps were in 200MB iPhone apps. When it took ages to download the same app to my work iPhone as I was downloading to my normal Android I thought there was something wrong with the iPhone at first, but it was literally spending five times the data to download what seemed to be an identical app. There's something to be said for downloading a 50MiB app to save yourself from downloading 1MiB every time you pull out the website, but with modern app sizes, things are getting ridiculous.
• prince005 6mo ago
  You're not my target audience
• danabrams 6mo ago
  ios Native App > web app > android app > anything made with a cross platform toolkit like react native or flutter. I would much prefer a really well-crafted ios Native App with extensive attention to detail than anything, even a web app made with similar detail (in most cases). And also ios apps are far more likely to receive that level of attention than just about anything else.
  • johnflan 6mo ago
    > a really well-crafted ios Native App with extensive attention to detail Which seems to becoming a rare thing
• palata 6mo ago
  Those are valid arguments but I like apps better, for other reasons. Mostly security. When I use, say, the Signal app: - I can audit it, download it or even compile it myself from sources - Once I have installed it, Signal doesn't get to change it "in my back" - As a result, I don't need to trust Signal for the end-to-end encryption, which is the whole point of end-to-end encryption. When I use a webapp, say ProtonMail: - Every time I load the webapp, it is downloaded from the Proton servers. Even if I once stop to audit it, next time I load it, it may totally be a different codebase (that e.g. adds a backdoor, potentially just for me, and just this one time). - I need to trust that Proton doesn't inject a backdoor to extract my key, then end-to-end encryption is useless. I could also trust Proton to not read my emails, right? - If a webapp is served by a CDN, I have to trust that the CDN doesn't tamper with it. Actually Meta has an extension made for verifying that for WhatsApp Web. The extension is a bulky way to make sure that you loaded what Meta wanted you to load (i.e. that Cloudflare did not tamper with it), but it DOES NOT ensure that Meta did not inject a backdoor just for you, just this time.
• OhMeadhbh 6mo ago
  Preach your truth, brother!
• mark_l_watson 6mo ago
  [dead]
• jonathanstrange 6mo ago
  I think it's best to ignore this kind of user feedback and focus on the users who really want the service or product and are willing download an app if necessary or use the web version if necessary. Popular opinions on apps/web and desktop/mobile change every few years. I remember when Facebook became deeply unpopular and was afraid of going under because they didn't manage to provide a native app. Because of the walled gardens, duplication of efforts, and waste of resources I'd personally favor if apps died out but that is never going to happen because they always have better platform integration.
• erelong 6mo ago
  Like you touched on, they're just trying to get you to make a small commitment to being in their walled garden and then they add on a bunch of other things
• polyamid23 6mo ago
  This indeed is annoying. Burn it down. This year is the year of moving away from services pushing this nonsense. I am looking at you PayPal.
• Animats 6mo ago
  Unless you use it several times a day, downloading an "app" just gets in the way. You should never have to download an "app" for a one-time use. We never went back to the restaurant in Cupertino where the table QR code tried to force downloading an app that onboarded you into a food delivery service. That restaurant was treating on-site customers as delivery orders with a very short delivery distance. The food wasn't very good, either.
  • zadikian 6mo ago
    Would've left just from seeing a QR code on the table
• tonymet 6mo ago
  App developers are not living up to the expectations and needs that these services have in our lives. MyQ for example, is a Garage Door opener . It’s a key. It needs to meet the responsiveness and reliability expectations of a key. Instead, the app is slow, the buttons often freeze , the app logs itself out without notifying you – so in the most urgent situation you don’t have access to open your door. Even some of the better ones don’t take themselves seriously. Buggy, hostile UIs , slow. Honestly I don’t believe most of the producers are even using their own apps. I’m able to discover critical bugs within 2 minutes using nearly any app.
• leros 6mo ago
  I have an app that is literally just a wrapper around the website. The mobile website and the mobile app are the exact same experience. Before I built the app, people were constantly asking me to build a mobile app. Yes, I had a PWA but people still wanted an app. I thought it was kind of silly but I eventually built that wrapper app. It immediately got thousands of downloads, users upgrading to paid plans increased by 10x, and app users have way better metrics that website users. It's pretty interesting, but as a website owner, having an app is valuable.
  • truetraveller 6mo ago
    SaasS or one-time? Did people pay via native App Store integration? Or pay via the desktop website? App price? Answers would be super helpful. Thanks!
    • leros 6mo ago
      Its a monthly/annual subscription. They can pay on the website or via native payments in the mobile app. The subscription works no matter where you bought it.
  • abustamam 6mo ago
    It is silly but you have to meet customers where they are. I think the problem is also that PWAs don't have any discoverability, and no standardization. I did some consulting work for a company that had a PWA. They had a 200-line long react component that was intended to determine what modal to show the user depending on what web browser and OS they were using to instruct them how to install PWA depending on the combination of OS and browser. This is a lot of friction for the dev, and it's not clear to an average user what a PWA is. But they are familiar with, and for better or worse, trust, the App store. If I didn't know what a PWA and a site said "open menu and click on 'install!'" I'd be very wary of following those instructions! I think Android and iOS should provide some sort of hook between the app store and PWAs before they really start to catch on.
    • leros 6mo ago
• tracker1 6mo ago
  I've more than once had a company reply to a bug report about their website, "did you try using the app instead." To which I usually reply, "why would I trust your site with direct access to my phone when you can't make a website that works correctly?" That's just my thinking... I try not to install apps most of the time, I don't want them to have access or even the greater chance at breaking security/isolation. On a similar vein, I still can't believe that LinkedIn didn't get permanently banned from Apple and Google stores when they broke security to spy on emails.
• pwr1 6mo ago
  Yep. If your product needs me to install an app for a one-off thing, you've probably already lost me. The crazy part is how many teams still treat the web as the demo and the app as the “real” product. For a lot of stuff it's the opposite now. I know there are edge cases, but most of the time “download our app” just means “please care way more about our product than you currently do.”
  • davebren 6mo ago
    >> The crazy part is how many teams still treat the web as the demo and the app as the “real” product. But that's just the technical reality of what can be implemented on web vs. native because you are within an ephemeral browser tab and have all the restrictions that come with that.
    • pwr1 6mo ago
      Native has its place for sure — camera, sensors, offline, background tasks. But web has come a long way and for a lot of products it's genuinely enough. The issue is teams defaulting to "build an app" without asking whether the install friction is actually worth it for what they're building.
      • davebren 6mo ago
        The friction is mostly learned helplessness it seems since software is easier to install than ever. But it's there nonetheless and the play store discoverability is pretty much gone, so yeah that's why I can't develop mobile only anymore. As a user, in general if the product is a website then I want a site, and if it's an application I use regularly I want an app.
• areys 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• lrvick 6mo ago
  I had a doctor tell me that I had to buy an Android or iOS phone (I own neither) and install their new app, or they would be unable to continue seeing me as a patient. Found a new doctor, because anyone that thinks this way I do not trust my heath to. Absolutely no one will make me own a cell phone or install corpo spyware. It is still actually a choice.
• FusionX 6mo ago
  I agree...except, I would've appreciated some self-awareness from the author. They represent a minority of the users, yet they fail to comprehend this simple fact. For the large majority of users, phones are THE primary (if not only) device for their interaction with the internet. You can complain "them-lazy-brainrotting-GenZs" but some people don't have a choice. There are plenty of countries where a smartphone is the cheapest internet enabled device that a person can afford. Secondly, the UX for "web browsing" on the phone is strictly worse compared to (well-made) apps. In fact, apps are the reason for the explosion in popularity of smartphones. And also the reason only android and iphone have survived the OS race (see windows phone and linux phones). So — much to my own disappointment — it does make sense for companies to treat mobile (app) users as first class citizens. You need to understand that you are not the target user anymore. And, yes it sucks. That said, it does not justify the gradual enshittification, dark patterns and dopamine hacking that have been normalized in modern apps.
  • rkomorn 6mo ago
    Are you implying with your last sentence that websites are less culpable of enshittification, dark patterns, and dopamine hacking? Or are you including the web-based properties of "modern apps" in said apps?
• sequoia 6mo ago
  Though I agree with the author & use the web version of various applications, there is another side to this. The author says s/he uses plugins to disable ads and so on. If its an ad supported site for which one does not pay, this is tantamount to expecting the provider to run the service for no compensation/revenue at all. Furthermore, to say platform owners don't care about offending such users would be an understatement: platform owners likely want to actively repel such users. Why serve someone who neither pays a fee nor agrees to be shown ads?
• mancerayder 6mo ago
  I can't type on a smartphone. Even as I wrote this, c became a space, the word space started each time with an a, etc. But on a keyboard I type hella fast. Now, I also hate creating account after account, having all these applications needing to be installed with ads in them that I can't block or some permissions that I don't think it needs. F that.
• AlBugdy 6mo ago
  Being required to use an Android app sucks and is annoying, but an AOSP VM would solve the issue. Perhaps MITM-ing the app would be harder than MITM-ing a site without reversing the app. And not everyone has the hardware resources for an Android VM. But for me the main issues with "you need our app" BS is that they don't give you the apk but tell you to download it from the Google Play Store. They don't give you the source for the apk as well, as if it's such a huge trade secret how some shitty API works. The worst offenders ask for all the attestation shit (unrooted phone and so on). That's what's wrong with apps vs sites, not just the format itself. We should fight for FOSS apks with no attestation if companies want to invest so heavily in apps.
• devinsewell 6mo ago
  Nah u right, it is possible to do BLE debug stuff from browser, but my tool is so fire and china keeps downloading it 200x per day i had to add that $4.99 monthly subscription wall.
• downrightmike 6mo ago
  To be perfectly honest, modern phone apps are so riddled with spyware that it would be unthinkable for a similar situation to have started on PCs.
• OptionOfT 6mo ago
  The web version would be a-ok if it wasn't artificially blocking me from consuming it when on mobile, like Yelp. Or it's full of annoying popups to use the app, looking at you, Google.
• gpvos 6mo ago
  My bank is now doing this: for a few newish and not-quite-essential services you can only use their app, the rest you can still do via the web. The same has been going on with radio and podcasts for a while: e.g., the BBC, or my newspaper, wants me to install their app to listen to their streams or podcasts, while I much rather concentrate all my listening in one central radio or podcast app for all my sources. Note that a system for paid-only podcast subscriptions via generic podcast apps actually exists, but I've never used it since no podcast maker I listen to actually uses it.
• Henchman21 6mo ago
  The smartphone and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
• abustamam 6mo ago
  I was helping my mom with the simple task of installing an app on her iPhone SE. "64 GB" of storage (about 20 of which taken by OS and other system files). It turned into a two hour long slog of me determining which apps she needs, and of the ones she needs, how to back up her data to icloud so Instagram and other apps aren't taking 500mb each on her phone. This standard of every random website having an app and poorly managing cache and storage needs to stop. My mom can't begin to even understand how to fix it, and worse, she didn't even recognize half the apps I mentioned to her, which probably means she mindlessly clicked install on a bunch of random websites. We do not need more app bloat on our devices, especially if they are just thin wrappers over your web app.
• johnea 6mo ago
  I fully agree. A web based UI is superior in every way. This also means you don't have to be running this week's android version to use it, with all the increased surveillance consequences that implies. But, as the article states, people who are actually paying attention are a small minority and an acceptable collateral damage to user numbers.
• RRRA 6mo ago
  The worst thing about this is a company saying you need to lock yourself on one of the 2 proprietary platform that somehow didn't just wrap the web for apps and use a ridiculously small device you might own, but anyone on an open standard system can go F themselves...
• kazinator 6mo ago
  I can't search through the text in your app or copy paste out of it.
• grishka 6mo ago
  "The experience is better in our app". Yeah, right, and whose damn fault is that, I wonder?
• sys_64738 6mo ago
  I don't want to install your spyware. Vivaldi has it right with the browser now where you have UI autohide. I hope for that to get to Android.
• h4kunamata 6mo ago
  This and thanks to GrapheneOS! I have ditched a ton of apps, from Youtube, to X, Discord and what not. Apps is the biggest trap, it grants techs full access to your device, unless you are running GrapheneOS of course. Web version works just fine, faster, it is not bloated like the app and won't drain your battery since there is no app running in the background. The only app I still have is Instagram when I wanna upload a video to my car account because they refuse to do that via browser. If I place expects me to download an app to order, I am eating elsewhere.
• apatheticonion 6mo ago
  Who does serious work on a phone? I have found app-only experiences that cover looking for a job, looking for a house, doing accounting/personal finances. How can you even stay organized or do any meaningful data entry on a phone?
  • denysvitali 6mo ago
    I do: https://blog.denv.it/posts/im-happy-engineer-now/ https://blog.denv.it/posts/im-happy-engineer-now/
• rivalout 6mo ago
  I ran into the same “friends are too nice / surveys are too vague” problem and what helped was testing my landing page copy with people who don’t know me at all. I’ve been using TractionWay to throw up a few headline/message variations and get 4–5 brutally honest takes back in a few hours, plus they flag folks who’d actually want to hear more so I’m not just collecting opinions in a vacuum.
• someguyornotidk 6mo ago
  Slightly tangential but is there a way to download a PWA permanently on a mobile device and have it remain indefinitely even if the upstream site goes offline or changes? Every time I try to load a PWA on my phone from my dev laptop, it breaks after a few weeks (days?) for no obvious reason. I investigated this for a bit but eventually gave up and went the electron/wrapper app route. If we can find a real fix for this stupid issue, I would be more than happy to focus on PWAs.
• elwray 6mo ago
  I wonder what happened to PWAs
• NY-squared-AI 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• account42 6mo ago
  The real holy grail are native programs, especially ones divorced from the providers running the online services they interact with.