(Credit: René Ramos; Tabor Chichakly, Vector Tradition, TENITOR, artnazu/Adobe Stock)
Maybe you’ve encountered a website with a prompt like “Install this as a web app,” as I recently did with Google Meet. That’s one example of how you can get a Progressive Web App (or PWA). The Google Meet PWA is available in some web browsers, as are several other Google services, including Gmail and YouTube. Other app-like sites such as Outlook, Spotify, and Instagram are also ripe for the PWA treatment. Let's delve into exactly what PWAs are, how to get started with them, and what benefits they offer.
What Is a Progressive Web App?
The web has increasingly become more app-like. Websites can deliver notifications, run in the background, store data in local caches or persistent databases, and work offline. In fact, PCMag's Senior Security Analyst Kim Key wrote about ditching all her installed apps for web versions. The Progressive Web App standard allows websites to become even more like standalone apps by discarding browser elements that only clutter their interfaces.
Progressive Web Apps take advantage of the same technologies that power today’s advanced websites, including CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. But they also use a few newer and less common web standards, including Web Application Manifest (to define the app’s colors, configurations, name, icons, and URL) and Service Workers, which allow PWAs to function offline without an internet connection.
You might wonder why the term progressive is used. It stems from a web development strategy called progressive enhancement. With this strategy, a developer focuses on the main content and functions first and then adds extra capabilities for the browsers and platforms that support them. Related to progressive enhancement is responsive web design, in which content resizes for specific platforms, such as mobile or desktop devices.
Sadly, one of my favorite web browsers, Firefox, doesn’t support PWAs on the desktop, though it does on Android. Some Mozilla watchers have spotted a Taskbar Tabs feature in preview builds of the browser that could add something like PWA support. Opera, too, lacks specific support for PWAs even though it uses the same platform as Chrome and Edge.
In the meantime, let’s examine what you can gain from using PWAs (along with their drawbacks), how to install them on several platforms, and which are my favorites.
What Are the Advantages of PWAs?
PWAs let you focus on the meat of an app-like website without all the interface and window borders you normally get in a web browser. You just see one menu—the app's site menu—rather than both that and the browser’s menu, search box, and toolbar. Those browser elements are sometimes unnecessary distractions.
You can often hit the browser refresh hotkey (F5 on Windows, Command-R on macOS) to reload an unresponsive PWA. It's more of a pain to troubleshoot or fully restart an installed program that’s not responding.
You might find that PWAs include more capabilities than installed apps. “How can that be?” you ask. Well, companies often launch new features for their websites first and only later add them to their standalone applications, if ever.
Other advantages of PWAs are that they are lighter than native applications and platform-agnostic. In other words, developers don't need separate apps for mobile and desktop—as long as a browser that supports PWAs is running on the platform. On Windows, there’s no need for ancillary code modules or runtimes. As for a real-world example, Starbucks' PWA is more than 99% smaller than its installed iOS app.
Finally, PWAs sidestep the mobile app stores, which can be restrictive, especially for developers who must pay tribute to the platform providers. That said, the major platforms from Apple, Google, and Microsoft now allow developers to publish their apps to their respective stores. Either way, PWA installations are fast and simple.
What Are the Disadvantages of PWAs?
One downside of PWAs is that they are still websites underneath. Although many can continue functioning offline, some won’t. Just as with browser windows, you can have multiple instances of the same web app running simultaneously; you might view this as a positive (if you want more than one set of content in the app) or a negative (if you get confused by multiple windows running the same app).
Some PWAs require you to sign in frequently, as you would with a website, whereas most installed apps just start working when you fire them up. And there are certain types of applications for which PWAs aren't appropriate. Native apps coded to the metal of your system provide faster performance: You wouldn’t want to run a AAA video game or a video editor as a website.
Another problem with PWAs is discoverability. Since there’s no PWA app store, it’s hard to know which sites you can install as this type of app. The experience also depends on how well a developer implements the PWA functionality—some offer clear setup and usage experiences while others do not.
Keeping both an installed app and a PWA for the same service on your device could lead to confusion. My advice is to just uninstall the native app and save the system resources.
Which PWAs Should You Use?
Certain types of web sites make a lot of sense to use as PWAs—communication, social media, and streaming music apps are good candidates. Two PWAs that I run all the time are Gmail and Spotify.
The regular Spotify app takes up over a GB of drive space on my Windows PC. I wondered why that was necessary because I didn’t need the app to download every song as I played it. After switching to the PWA, the app takes up less than 5MB.
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I use Threads as a PWA (I no longer use the service formerly known as Twitter), but its official app store version is actually a PWA, so it wasn't a tough decision. Google Meet and Zoom are excellent choices for installation as Progressive Web Apps, as well.
As with the Threads example, you might have installed an app without even realizing it’s a PWA. Windows includes them in the Microsoft Store, in the Start menu program list, and in the Apps and Features section where you uninstall them just like any other applications. ChromeOS includes PWAs in its app store.
How Do You Install a Progressive Web App?
A big advantage of PWAs is how easy they are to install. Better yet, the process continues to get simpler for the browsers that support PWAs, including Chrome and Edge. Just note that browsers have been shying away from terms like install and app as of late. Instead, you'll find language such as "Add to home screen." Fear not: Those options get you real PWAs. Here’s what you need to do to install a PWA on each major operating system (in order of popularity).
How to Install PWAs on Android
Google Chrome
After you land on a site that you can use as a PWA, head to the three-dot Chrome menu at the top right. Tap "Add to Home screen." Once you tap through the Install app message box, the app icon appears on your home screen. (Note that you can also add sites that don’t provide PWA features to your home screen.) The long-press app choices include Uninstall, but a telltale option below that is Site Settings—something you don’t see for store-installed apps.
Mozilla Firefox
For sites that you can turn into PWAs, Firefox’s menu has a simple Install option. After you tap this choice, you see the Add to Screen dialog box, which lets you drag the app icon to where you want it on your home screens. The icons for Firefox-created PWAs have a small orange Firefox logo at the bottom right of the main app logo, a helpful tipoff that the icon is taking you to a web app. As with Chrome-created apps, you see an Uninstall from the long-press context menu, but don't use that! It uninstalls the entire Firefox app. Instead use the X Remove option to just get rid of the PWA. For PWAs you install via Chrome, the Uninstall long-press option uninstalls just the PWA.
Microsoft Edge
Edge on Android works similarly to Firefox. You start with the "Add to phone" choice in the Settings panel. Then, you see those magic words, "Install app." Next, you can drag the app icon wherever you want on your home screen. As with Firefox, be sure to choose X Remove and not Uninstall if you want to get rid of just the PWA and its icon.
How to Install PWAs on Windows
Microsoft Edge
The default Windows web browser provides a good option for installing PWAs on Microsoft’s desktop operating system in both Windows 10 and Windows 11. It puts the app in your Start menu just like an app you install the normal ways. Here’s how it works:
Navigate to the website you want to install as a PWA.
For PWA-compatible websites, you can either click on the icon on the right side of the address bar that looks like three squares and a plus sign (the hover text is “App available. Install [app name]), or you can choose Apps from the three-dot overflow menu and then click Install [app name]. For some PWAs, the Install box pops up automatically.
That’s it. Your new app appears in the Start menu and gets a distinctive icon in the taskbar (not the Edge icon). You can move the icon to your desktop as a shortcut, too. If you want to uninstall the PWA, you can do so from the Start Menu's right-click menu, from Windows’ Apps and Features Setting page, or from Edge’s Manage Apps page.
Google Chrome
Just as with Edge, Chrome has a button in the address bar that pops up for sites that offer PWA functionality. (Note that Brave has PWA support that’s nearly identical to Chrome’s.)
Click the Install App button in the address bar or choose Install [app name] from the three-dot overflow menu at the top right.
After this, you see the app with no browser border and an icon for it in your Start menu. You can now uninstall Chrome-created PWAs from the Start menu, Windows Settings, and the app's menu.
How to Install PWAs on iOS and iPadOS
iOS and iPadOS have the weakest support for PWAs of all the platforms I discuss here. Apple allows only Safari to create something like PWAs—third-party browsers are left out of the party. Safari doesn’t use the terms install and app, like other browsers that support PWAs do. To install one on iOS or iPadOS, load the PWA-capable site, choose the Share up arrow icon at the bottom of the screen, and select Add to Home Screen.
When I created a PWA for Instagram, the icon and app looked identical to the App Store version, but instead of a Remove App option in the long-press menu, I saw a Delete Bookmark choice. Note that PWA icons don’t appear in iOS’s App Library, so you don’t get the full app experience. This isn't all that surprising, considering Apple’s preference for closed systems.
How to Install PWAs on macOS
On macOS, installing PWAs works just as it does on Windows. However, you don't see the terms install or app in the default Safari browser. Instead, you use the up-arrow sharing button and choose "Add to Dock." Your new app appears in Launchpad but not in the main Applications Finder folder. You uninstall it like any other Mac app by moving it to the trash.
Apps you create with either Chrome or Edge get a top menu named for the new app rather than for the browser. I could even make Outlook PWA my default email-handling client. However, you have to uninstall these PWAs from within the browser rather than natively in the OS.
How to Install PWAs on linux-Based OSes
In linux, you can set up PWA in the Brave, Chrome, and Edge web browsers just as you can on other desktop OSes. You see the same Install app button in the toolbar, and simply tapping that button creates the PWA. I tested this in Ubuntu. The PWA app icon appears on the Applications page, and the distinctive app icon rather than the browser icon appears in the Activities panel.
Currently, you can't use Firefox to create PWAs on these systems. Users reported unreliability with PWAs in Brave on linux, but Ubuntu 24.10 improves the PWA situation, at least for Chromium browsers. You can uninstall a PWA from its three-dot menu.
How to Install PWAs on ChromeOS
The Chrome web browser is a major component of Google’s desktop OS, ChromeOS. Installing PWAs on it is similar to doing so on other desktop platforms. Google might direct you to the Google Play version of an app in some cases, however. You often still get a PWA, but you manage it via the app store instead of within the browser.
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