2026-01-18
Why did progressive web apps (PWAs) die?
Disclaimer
As of 2026, why do people even use mobile apps, when they can use websites on mobile browser instead?
- Critical
- Notifications when app is closed - Android and iOS don't support browsers sending notifications when the website is closed. I think this was probably an intentional move to kill PWAs and maintain their app store revenues.
- Frequent GPS access - Using google maps in chrome and especially in iOS is a bad experience. (Haven't studied technical or political reasons why)
- Good-to-have
- UX - In practice, I've had many people tell me UX of mobile apps is better than UX of mobile websites. This does not make sense to me at a technical level. Most apps are basically some html and css, serving it over mobile browser shouldn't be hard. (I understand why gaming apps or GPS apps might be more complicated.)
- Frequent file system access - iOS filesystem sucks. I think this is on purpose, to get everyone to either use iCloud, or purchase a mac and do airdrops. Websites can only access one file at a time. Mobile apps can only access one folder at a time.
In the long run, building an open source mobile OS with less lines of code is the only way to fix all this.
Open source OS is not my priority right now, preventing ASI risk is. But maybe someone else wants to work on this.
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