What a tragedy that what used to be called "installing" is now mocked by the industry lobby as "sideloading", and what used to just be "visiting a web page" has taken its rightful place.
I have not and probably will not ever "install" a "web app". This is literally just a list of web sites. It's no more useful than Yahoo circa 1998 but now the bookmarks are on your desktop or homescreen rather than in your browser, where you're going to be taken anyways if you open one of them.
Off the top of my head for ios - push notifications, offline use, optimized storage options (local storage not cleared after 7 days of no use), app-like ux (no browser controls), home screen icon for easy access, background audio (sound while app is closed).
The real advantage is for devs who can build an app that feels like a native app, but with one codebase for distribution across OSs/devices, not having to pay the apple/google tax, and not dealing with app review.
I made my web app into a PWA and even went so far as to polish the home screen icon and splash screen to make it look nice once installed. However, in the end, I use the browser much more frequently, simply because I can access the URL of the page and share it elsewhere.
The beauty of the browser is that you can choose your own adventure. Being able to use or test apps in a browser tab is awesome, and it's up to the dev to choose a ux that showcases / informs the user of additional capabilities unlocked after adding to home screen. We're at the very early days of exploring what this ux can unlock.
Also, on a desktop, some websites are just more naturally run in their own separate window than as a browser tab because you frequently need to switch to/from them: e.g. ChatGPT, Gmail, Google Voice/Keep, MDN docs, dictionaries.
And you can put the PWAs in full sceen mode, whereas full-screen mode in a regular browser is almost always pointless ever since they took away tab indicators.
I like the idea of "installing" a web app that basically creates a bookmark to a webpage, because the alternative is installing an actual app. It's nice to have things all basically browser based as it gives the developer more control of the product and creates a single reasonable platform. I hate going to linkedin or Reddit or similar websites on mobile and them forcing me to use their app. It also breaks the dominance of centralized app stores like android and apple
Yes. Although this depends a lot on the quality of the software, native apps tend to be much better in terms of UI and performance, and they tend to use less system resources -- sometimes a lot less.
Nowadays i would argue that the css rendering speed is faster than the Android UI renderer which suffers from extreme complexity. Ios might be still faster, but also much more limited. A good SPA is indistinguishable from a native app.
Properly executed, it should act as segmented cache/cookies/storage, so you can clone, delete, etc isolated versions of your sessions with misbehaving (or potentially misbehaving) services.
Your average person now think of anything as an “app” or it should have one, even if it was just a wrapper for a browser, they would still install the app (1), so I think OP is in the right direction, nothing will change from the user side but much better for the developer one.
This is our hope. If we can help smooth out the messaging / install process, once a PWA is installed most apps will feel identical to a native app for most users. We used to say "web apps are apps" but now we just say "apps are apps" :-P
There is one VERY big difference between PWAs and Yahoo circa 1998: you can use PWAs without a network connection, with full interactivity. This is really important for me, and probably for anyone who travels frequently, is on a metered internet connection, or just lives in a location with poor infrastructure.
Yahoo did and still does require you to be connected to the internet, and whether that's on a 2400 baud dial-up connection or a 5G wireless link, it will still cost money and be less reliable in places.
I see there's a "list your app" (which means I can't submit an app that isn't mine, right?), but there are some high quality installable PWAs that are missing. Hoppscotch is a good example.
Not expecting you to index the entire internet and filter out all the spam. Just curious how the current list was built.
That's correct, at the moment you can only add an app that you can claim ownership of (vis dns). The current list was manually added by us + by devs who have listed their apps on our site, but we'll be rolling out a more scalable solution soon, along with some better curation. I think that's a good idea to allow users to recommend listings - we'll look into adding that soon. Would love for you to create an account so we can keep you posted on this feature / other progress :-)
Feedback: The home page's horizontal carousels/reels lack trackpad scrolling functionality. Interaction is limited to the arrow buttons on the side. To enhance user experience, it would be beneficial to make them scrollable via trackpad, similar to the Apple Store website.[0]
I'm going through this very thing now. I'm focused on getting the backend features working, but getting pressure to make the tiny tweaks to the UI. Once you open the UI to actual users, priorities quickly get rearranged. The UI complaints are the punch in the "everyone has a game plan until they get punched in the face" phrase.
Thank you! It was pricey, but not as bad as it could've been. I pre-ordered it a month before .app became available as a TLD, and bought it on the first day of availability (May 2018!). I've been planning on building this for some time :-P
Re carousel feedback - thank you! We've talked about this but have been prioritizing some other features ahead of it. That said, your feedback helps us prioritize higher. Keep the feedback coming, the more the better! Also if you want to connect offline, lmk.
Just to 2nd it. I came to the comments first, but after visiting the site, it does feel unnatural. Also to pile on, having to multi-click the next button one at a time per app feels tedious.
Seeing how you are at this stage though, color me very impressed. I've just never paid attention to PWAs, so seeing them available like this gave me a totally different (positive) consideration for them. I would love to see numbers of use just to see how widely used PWAs are. This isn't an idea for the UI for popularity per app, but just for PWA in general. Just in terms of if this is something I should be considering. Great job and good luck!
Agree on the carousel. The buttons are small and clunky — if you miss them you get a page you don't want. Just use a div with overflow:auto for native browser scroll.
I like the concept a lot, but I also think it should filter to only installable apps by default. If you detect a user is on a mobile device, it would probably also make sense to enable the mobile filter by default too.
It would also be nice if there was an offline-capable filter as well, but maybe I missed it?
I also notice the Developer tab is not part of the PWA, which kicks you out of the PWA experience on iOS, even though it seems like that marketing page could be contained within the tab? It might also be nice to link to resources for getting started on developing a high quality PWA, if any resources like that exist.
Now that PWAs on iOS can finally show notifications (if the user wants), I hope more developers will take them seriously. I trust browser isolation more than I trust native app isolation, and a lot of the native apps that I use would work perfectly as a PWA.
This has been such a great addition, once it was officially added I've quickly built a small web app that can now distribute notifications to all my devices effortlessly, with a single codebase and with no need to pay the dreaded $99/yr subscription. Haven't released that publicly but I might at some point once I clean up the mess that inevitably resulted from me writing it in around 2 hours.
Thank you, this is great feedback. What to show and when has been an ongoing convo - we chose to evolve this based on supply side milestones. Keep an eye out for some cool updates :-). We don't yet have the ability to filter by offline-capable, but that's a great idea. Re the dev tab, this is a work in progress - right now a few things are split apart, but we'll be folding everything back together at some point.
Re notifications, 100% agree - this was a major roadblock. The next few years are going to be very interesting :-P
But isn’t “installable” the entire point of this site, and your company?
If you want you help the discussion against native apps, you need to clearly take the side of proper installable PWAs, not just links to websites. It feels misleading and gives argument ammo to the “native always” crowd.
I really hope your store takes off. I will say a prayer or two to this end. May your good character flourish and may you avoid all temptations that come with gatekeeping
Apple and Google's app stores are death. They motivated me to re-code my c and java-based iOS and Android apps in js+wasm (SPA/PWA) from scratch. For a long time, I announced it with its proper name ("PWA"). I became very frustrated every time I interacted with users who asked "what does that mean?". So now it's simply "Web Version"
Thank you! We have a very strong ethos around democratizing distribution and we plan to be careful not to go down a path to becoming what we hate. We're here to serve developers and users, and we'll look for guidance from our user base constantly. Re "PWA" I can empathize - I've found that for the majority of people, "installable web app" seems to register more effectively, but hoping that "PWA" becomes more broadly understood. Thanks again for the comment, and we look forward to serving you :-)
Very nice, one issue is that (on Safari iOS 16) when I navigate back to the list my scroll position is forgotten, I could understand when using my browser back button but I used the one in the UI so I’d expect it to remember the scroll position.
Beyond that nitpick though this is excellent, well done.
Awesome, thanks for the feedback! That's a great idea - I've posted it in our internal channel. Also, you should have been approved for a dev account - we're excited to have you onboard! Please feel free to let us know how we can help - our mission is to help web devs grow their business.
Thanks, works well - just one small bit of feedback there: wish there were some hints on aspect ratios for the screenshots (or they should be displayed at the image's aspect ratio). Currently the sides get cut off: https://store.app/drop-lol
Also, would be nice to have a "more by this developer" section. (Or any other "similar to" recommendation section.)
Hi, I'm an engineer at Store.app. Thanks so much for the feedback, love the listings (and nice lighthouse score!). We're definitely planning to surface more developer information on the listings, this is a great idea. Your profile page does currently highlight the apps you own with some of their metrics and a feature of our verified plan is you get an "About the developer" card on your listing that links to your profile. More on the way!
I'm surprised by how much easier and faster this is than installing an app from Google Play. No ads above what I really searched for. Installation is basically instantaneous.
I love it, maybe finally developers will no longer be under the mercy of apple/google store! Probably the only thing PWA fails to do now that anything needs access to the hardware say wifi/Bluetooth scanner and such, and big games too, the rest of the apps, I don’t see why it needs to be installed from app/play store.
I see your point, but are they under this site mercy? This site is like a directory rather than a policy maker like app stores, it wont take % of any subscription for starter plus all the pros of lower development costs and what not. Say this site suddenly decided to remove your app? So what, your users can still go to your site and have the PWA, now if Apple decided to do the same to your app, good luck getting anyone to use it. Now is PWA the ultimate replacement? Certainly not, access to hardware, performance wise, games, you will still need them, but other than that, I think it’s a step forward.
Awesome! Were you able to add it successfully? We have a widget that you'll find under your claimed app to showcase your listing states, and we have a few more things that you can use on your app coming in about a week. If you're interested in early access, shoot me a message at support@store.app and we can show you what's coming.
This is awesome, as PWAs get better I really REALLY hope they'll challenge the big app stores. So far no one I know outside of tech knows or cares that this is even possible, but I hope sites like this will gradually change that and also change people's perceptions of what has to be a "native" app.
I don't see any reason why in 10 years we should still be paying the 30% tax (+ the $100/year) just to get something with notifications and offline on the home screen. Sadly there's literally hundreds of billions on the table, so there's going to continue to be huge resistance.
When I install something from those stores, I feel like there is some level of vetting against malware, or at least the ability for the store to pull it if it becomes known-malicious after I installed it. 30% might be too much of a fee, but some payment for that service makes sense, I think.
Are PWAs somehow immune to this concern by virtue of running on the way stricter feature set that a browser offers? If they can prompt the user for access to all of these APIs [0], and the user allows it, and then it later becomes malicious while able to run a service worker in the background, that seems a bit more concerning than regular non-PWA browsing that can't continue to run after the tab is closed.
I totally agree, the security issue is the biggest thing app stores have going for them. I think 2 things.
1. if momentum goes PWA's way, smart people will work on these problems. I'm not saying I have the answers, but if I can root for either 2 megacorps or the open web, I'm going open web every time. (again, not saying we're there yet with PWAs)
2. If an app store's only function is vetting software, we can have an open market for marketplaces. Anyone can build their own app store and, with enough reputation, become trusted in the eyes of consumer's, just like we trust Apple The difference is in a free market, that 30% and $100 drop dramatically, I would wager to something more like 5% and $0.
At those rates, having an app store where people feel the software is secure, can trust reviews/ratings etc seems reasonable to me. PWA doesn't have to mean otherwise
Service workers aren’t a magic “run forever in the background” technology.
I’m fairly sure PWAs can’t run in the background at all on iOS or Android, except for possibly a brief moment after the PWA receives a notification, and the service worker doesn’t have access to much of anything during that interval. If anyone can link to something that demonstrates otherwise, okay, but I have checked on this in the past, and I don’t think so.
Native apps have been caught with their hand in the metaphorical cookie jar over and over again. The App Store review process is largely ineffective. Apple apparently didn’t even realize that apps were doing sketchy things with the clipboard until it became a major headline[0], and this is only the tip of the iceberg of “things App Store review didn’t catch”.
Native apps continue to find ways to bypass sandboxing that the OS applies.
Browsers naturally take a much more adversarial posture against the code they’re running, so the sandboxing is far stronger.
Apple has spent at least a decade marketing[1] to convince people the App Store is synonymous with safety. Given how detached this seems to be from reality, the simplest conclusion seems to be that they do this because they really want their 30% cut. The marketing campaign seems to be working too well. In reality, the browser seems to be substantially safer, although nothing is perfect.
“The apps you love.
From a place you can trust.
For over a decade, the App Store has proved to be a safe and trusted place to discover and download apps.”
> When I install something from those stores, I feel like there is some level of vetting against malware
I don't.
Google Play has served me malware on my device (touchpal) that went undiscovered forever. And tons of high search ranking apps are straight up scams or data harvesting fronts even if they aren't legally "malware." I feel more secure about web apps because at least I am protected by the browser's sandboxing/fingerprinting protection (and in my case Cromite's extra blocking).
IDK about iOS, but Google Play is a dumpster fire. I hope it burns to the ground.
Yeah i know, hence "So far no one I know outside of tech knows or cares that this is even possible, but I hope sites like this will gradually change that and also change people's perceptions of what has to be a "native" app."
> anybody developing mobile apps knows that almost nobody downloads the company’s app, and it’s just there for vanity and clout
not PWAs, I’m saying that ios/android apps dont have much traction for most companies
many of the reasons are that discovery is bad , and many people have run out of space on their phones, and generally just aren’t interested in another app
but PWAs solve this by at least letting people experience your service
It's up to all of us to build the future, brick by brick. What looks impossible today might look inevitable in hindsight. Ok sorry, enough cliches from me for the night :-P
I've had them go missing just by doing an OTA update of my phone, and I don't think it was even a major Android version. Or maybe it was a Play store update of the Chrome app, I forget exactly. But it was one of those things that's not expected to eliminate data, yet it did.
How? I would like to list my finance PWA[1] but I had to create a regular account first and now wait for approval on a developer account to submit an app.
Hi! You should've been approved for a developer account. I suppose the delay could go past two minutes. We'll be speeding up this process soon. Hopefully in aggregate it only took you less than two mins :-) If you have any issues, ping me at support@store.app!
Thanks! I got downvoted for my comment but your response was worth it. I got approved in 15 minutes, but I'm not counting! It wasn't mentioned DNS verification is required for app submissions but that is good you are doing that. Now I need to go through the Google Domains / Squarespace transition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36346454
Pretty cool! I tried to list my app but the screenshot upload doesn't seem to work -- it won't accept any files I've tried via drag/drop in Chrome or Firefox. I've been able to upload files to other sites without any issue (running Linux).
Thank you for the feedback, we're looking into this. In the meantime, you should be able to upload from your files if the images have the correct aspect ratio. If you continue to have issues, ping me at support@store.app and we'll make sure everything gets sorted out.
Actually, it's my own fault -- I assumed the area in the preview that said I hadn't uploaded any images yet was the drop target, but it's not, that's over in the sidebar. Cheers!
232 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 244 ms ] threadI have not and probably will not ever "install" a "web app". This is literally just a list of web sites. It's no more useful than Yahoo circa 1998 but now the bookmarks are on your desktop or homescreen rather than in your browser, where you're going to be taken anyways if you open one of them.
Call me a cynical boomer.
But really, I think you'll change your mind at some point. There's some pretty cool stuff coming.
The real advantage is for devs who can build an app that feels like a native app, but with one codebase for distribution across OSs/devices, not having to pay the apple/google tax, and not dealing with app review.
And you can put the PWAs in full sceen mode, whereas full-screen mode in a regular browser is almost always pointless ever since they took away tab indicators.
I use mostly apps like Whatsapp, and garage door opener.
Can't use banks apps as you can only login to one account.
Everything I do is on the browser. https://hn.premii.com & https://reddit.premii.com - almost 10 years old, it still works. No need to update the framework or need someone's approval.
I get that. But as a user, I really hate browser-based applications and avoid them entirely unless I have no other option.
Exactly. It’s like CGI in movies. People always talk about how bad CGI is, without realizing just how much good CGI they never notice.
https://youtu.be/bL6hp8BKB24
(1) Reminds me of this :) https://files.catbox.moe/36o4jr.jpeg
Yahoo did and still does require you to be connected to the internet, and whether that's on a 2400 baud dial-up connection or a 5G wireless link, it will still cost money and be less reliable in places.
I see there's a "list your app" (which means I can't submit an app that isn't mine, right?), but there are some high quality installable PWAs that are missing. Hoppscotch is a good example.
Not expecting you to index the entire internet and filter out all the spam. Just curious how the current list was built.
Feedback: The home page's horizontal carousels/reels lack trackpad scrolling functionality. Interaction is limited to the arrow buttons on the side. To enhance user experience, it would be beneficial to make them scrollable via trackpad, similar to the Apple Store website.[0]
[0] https://www.apple.com/store
Re carousel feedback - thank you! We've talked about this but have been prioritizing some other features ahead of it. That said, your feedback helps us prioritize higher. Keep the feedback coming, the more the better! Also if you want to connect offline, lmk.
Seeing how you are at this stage though, color me very impressed. I've just never paid attention to PWAs, so seeing them available like this gave me a totally different (positive) consideration for them. I would love to see numbers of use just to see how widely used PWAs are. This isn't an idea for the UI for popularity per app, but just for PWA in general. Just in terms of if this is something I should be considering. Great job and good luck!
It would also be nice if there was an offline-capable filter as well, but maybe I missed it?
I also notice the Developer tab is not part of the PWA, which kicks you out of the PWA experience on iOS, even though it seems like that marketing page could be contained within the tab? It might also be nice to link to resources for getting started on developing a high quality PWA, if any resources like that exist.
Now that PWAs on iOS can finally show notifications (if the user wants), I hope more developers will take them seriously. I trust browser isolation more than I trust native app isolation, and a lot of the native apps that I use would work perfectly as a PWA.
This has been such a great addition, once it was officially added I've quickly built a small web app that can now distribute notifications to all my devices effortlessly, with a single codebase and with no need to pay the dreaded $99/yr subscription. Haven't released that publicly but I might at some point once I clean up the mess that inevitably resulted from me writing it in around 2 hours.
Re notifications, 100% agree - this was a major roadblock. The next few years are going to be very interesting :-P
If you want you help the discussion against native apps, you need to clearly take the side of proper installable PWAs, not just links to websites. It feels misleading and gives argument ammo to the “native always” crowd.
Apple and Google's app stores are death. They motivated me to re-code my c and java-based iOS and Android apps in js+wasm (SPA/PWA) from scratch. For a long time, I announced it with its proper name ("PWA"). I became very frustrated every time I interacted with users who asked "what does that mean?". So now it's simply "Web Version"
Beyond that nitpick though this is excellent, well done.
Also, submitted a developer application; have released a few PWAs myself - hope to post them there too!
Also, would be nice to have a "more by this developer" section. (Or any other "similar to" recommendation section.)
Do you have ambitions to monetize this, or go the open source route? Where do you go from here?
[0] https://permission.site
There's already https://appsco.pe for example.
I don't see any reason why in 10 years we should still be paying the 30% tax (+ the $100/year) just to get something with notifications and offline on the home screen. Sadly there's literally hundreds of billions on the table, so there's going to continue to be huge resistance.
Are PWAs somehow immune to this concern by virtue of running on the way stricter feature set that a browser offers? If they can prompt the user for access to all of these APIs [0], and the user allows it, and then it later becomes malicious while able to run a service worker in the background, that seems a bit more concerning than regular non-PWA browsing that can't continue to run after the tab is closed.
[0] https://permission.site
1. if momentum goes PWA's way, smart people will work on these problems. I'm not saying I have the answers, but if I can root for either 2 megacorps or the open web, I'm going open web every time. (again, not saying we're there yet with PWAs)
2. If an app store's only function is vetting software, we can have an open market for marketplaces. Anyone can build their own app store and, with enough reputation, become trusted in the eyes of consumer's, just like we trust Apple The difference is in a free market, that 30% and $100 drop dramatically, I would wager to something more like 5% and $0.
At those rates, having an app store where people feel the software is secure, can trust reviews/ratings etc seems reasonable to me. PWA doesn't have to mean otherwise
They have been, it's just not your niche of interest! You don't know what you don't know, etc.
I’m fairly sure PWAs can’t run in the background at all on iOS or Android, except for possibly a brief moment after the PWA receives a notification, and the service worker doesn’t have access to much of anything during that interval. If anyone can link to something that demonstrates otherwise, okay, but I have checked on this in the past, and I don’t think so.
Native apps have been caught with their hand in the metaphorical cookie jar over and over again. The App Store review process is largely ineffective. Apple apparently didn’t even realize that apps were doing sketchy things with the clipboard until it became a major headline[0], and this is only the tip of the iceberg of “things App Store review didn’t catch”.
Native apps continue to find ways to bypass sandboxing that the OS applies.
Browsers naturally take a much more adversarial posture against the code they’re running, so the sandboxing is far stronger.
Apple has spent at least a decade marketing[1] to convince people the App Store is synonymous with safety. Given how detached this seems to be from reality, the simplest conclusion seems to be that they do this because they really want their 30% cut. The marketing campaign seems to be working too well. In reality, the browser seems to be substantially safer, although nothing is perfect.
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/tiktok-and-53-other-...
[1]:
https://apple.com/app-store/
“The apps you love. From a place you can trust. For over a decade, the App Store has proved to be a safe and trusted place to discover and download apps.”
I don't.
Google Play has served me malware on my device (touchpal) that went undiscovered forever. And tons of high search ranking apps are straight up scams or data harvesting fronts even if they aren't legally "malware." I feel more secure about web apps because at least I am protected by the browser's sandboxing/fingerprinting protection (and in my case Cromite's extra blocking).
IDK about iOS, but Google Play is a dumpster fire. I hope it burns to the ground.
they already use web apps with optional notifications
anybody developing mobile apps knows that almost nobody downloads the company’s app, and it’s just there for vanity and clout
Yeah i know, hence "So far no one I know outside of tech knows or cares that this is even possible, but I hope sites like this will gradually change that and also change people's perceptions of what has to be a "native" app."
> anybody developing mobile apps knows that almost nobody downloads the company’s app, and it’s just there for vanity and clout
What do you mean here? Did you mean to say PWAs?
many of the reasons are that discovery is bad , and many people have run out of space on their phones, and generally just aren’t interested in another app
but PWAs solve this by at least letting people experience your service
I think it was this: https://support.google.com/android/thread/120942877/all-my-w...
How? I would like to list my finance PWA[1] but I had to create a regular account first and now wait for approval on a developer account to submit an app.
[1] https://github.com/hbcondo/revenut-app
Same re google domains, ugh. Time to transfer.
Security-wise, they cannot do anything worse then a website can. In other words, this is _less_ then a native app can do.