Here's How Web Apps Work in macOS Sonoma

[coolbreeze2]

I swear this could be done prior to Sonoma.

 

[Boyd01]

Is it safe to say Apple’s Web Apps are the same thing as a Progressive Web App?

Based on this story, I'd say no. PWA's are built to include special resources that give them capabilities a normal website doesn't have. As I posted earlier, these just sound like bookmarks that can have their own icon in the dock and a different style browser window.

I don't think web apps are all that advantageous on the Mac however. On a phone, they are great because they have home screen icons like other apps and can run in their own full screen windows separate from Safari without a browser interface. They are pretty hard to distinguish from a standalone app unless you look closely.

These things aren't so important when you have a big screen on a computer. But the important difference is that web apps have persistent storage that will not be automatically deleted by the browser. We don't really know if this new feature supports that. iOS Safari does, but (at least until now) MacOS Safari will automatically delete website data if you don't visit every 7 days.

 

[jdclifford]

This looks great! I've been looking for something like this for a couple of years now. We use some web based cloud services for a lot of our work and I've always wanted to keep them separate from all my other browsing. I use another browser (chrome) just for those apps now but I've long wanted to be able to package these two apps into a stand alone app.

Latest version of Safari in Mac OS Sonoma provides for separate profiles so you can use one for work and another for personal browsing.

 

[DHagan4755]

This feature strikes me as the opening salvo in a larger play by Apple. Apple could be planning to transform their services like Apple Music or Pages into these web apps & it would be so seamless you can't tell the difference. Think of macOS like a pin setter and think of the code on the website as the pins getting loaded.

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

I swear this could be done prior to Sonoma.

You could put a link in your dock, but not like this.

 

[jz0309]

So it basically runs the website in kinda like a “Safari Lite” shell that has limited capability (as mentioned passwords etc) …
I suppose I’ll give that a try once public beta comes out but dies not appear that appealing.

 

[spicynujac]

Is this any different than what Windows had since at least XP? Open a webpage, make a shortcut on the desktop, then access from there or drag into the dock?

Or how you can add a shortcut to any web page on ios? I guess I didn't realize this wasn't possible on MacOS.

 

[sracer]

This was the biggest eyeroll moment of the WWDC keynote for me. (I liked all the rest)

PWA's are a thing for years and years. They even got a spokesperson and demo for pinning a webapp and made it sound like they invented something magical and revolutionary that will enrich people's lives.

Can't believe it took them so long to add something that has been considered 'a basic feature' for years on other platforms and browsers.

"add something that has been considered 'a basic feature' for years on other platforms and browsers."

This is the Apple way.

I've been doing this "web apps" on MacOS for years with Google Chrome. Back in the day, Chrome could install Chrome apps on Mac OS, but that is no longer supported as those apps get moved to PWA.

I've been doing the reverse of this with Apple's iCloud suite of apps on my Windows and ChromeOS systems. It's a great way to use Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and the other apps on non-Apple systems in a way that feels like native apps.

For those using a Chromium-based web browser, you can get the app-feel on any web site by using the open-as-popup browser extension.

 

[zach-coleman]

Yeah, now instead of one icon in the dock, Safari, I'm going to have an icon for every site I usually visit? (Which is currently six that I have in one Favorite/Bookmark thing that I pull down multiple times a day and select Open in New Tabs.)

If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. I think that it makes sense for things like Netflix which refuse to make a native Mac app. Isn't going to solve the inability to download shows, though.

This feature strikes me as the opening salvo in a larger play by Apple. Apple could be planning to transform their services like Apple Music or Pages into these web apps & it would be so seamless you can't tell the difference. Think of macOS like a pin setter and think of the code on the website as the pins getting loaded.

One of my favorite parts about Apple is that unlike Google they actually make native apps. I hate when everything is a janky web app. No matter how seamless they claim it is, it's never actually seamless. Google Photos is one of the best web apps I've used, and it still has all the obvious hallmarks of a janky web app. Google Docs has a much worse experience than Pages for this reason, too.

 

[koelsh]

I hope they give controls to the user to say “I do in fact want back and forward buttons even if the developer disabled it”

This really needs to include tabs and options for subdomains. A couple sites we use at work have their own single site browsers that don’t allow tabs which makes them completely useless.

 

[smwe]

Leave it to Apple to present first class PWA support as some revolutionary new tech. I'm glad they're doing it, but the real question is if they'll ever fully support PWAs (including push notifications) on iOS.

 

[DHagan4755]

One of my favorite parts about Apple is that unlike Google they actually make native apps. I hate when everything is a janky web app. No matter how seamless they claim it is, it's never actually seamless. Google Photos is one of the best web apps I've used, and it still has all the obvious hallmarks of a janky web app. Google Docs has a much worse experience than Pages for this reason, too.

No disagreement here. But we just watched Apple last week rollout a Game Porting Toolkit. In the grand scheme of things this web apps feature could evolve to both deal with side loading whilst also streamlining app development & quality. If everything you needed to make a native looking Mac or iOS app could be put in the code of the web site then you could really put that dent in the universe.

 

[960design]

So reading through the comments I get the impression this is basically creating a Safari shortcut on your dock, that opens a streamlined browser view, which may or may not be fully compatible with your keychain credentials? 😳

What am I missing?

2007 when this started on Safari mobile on the original iPhone, then later broken when the App Store was built.
The original vision was WebApps. Other browsers have had this capability, even on MacOS, for many years. You could install Starbucks as an app ( or any modern web application ).

I am using Brave browser right now and can see that I can install MacRumors Forums as an application. It will sit on the launchpad and can be deleted from Applications just as any other app can.

Now you can do that with Safari, again, after about 15 years.

 

[ttyRazor]

However, after I removed MacRumors from the Dock it still shows in Launchpad. I don't know if this is a bug though.

I was hoping it’d work this way. The dock could easily get pretty crowded if that were the only place they could stay. I’m surprised there’s not an option to go straight to Launchpad instead.

 

[960design]

1) Is local storage permanent??
Safari (last time I checked) purges local storage for any site not visited for more than 7 days. If an app is a PWA on iOS, then this does not occur as the PWA storage is separate and protected. For example, if an app uses IndexedDB extensively, purging would be a real issue.

Not sure when this rumor appeared. I must have been true at some point, but not for the last 10+ years that I have been developing PWAs. Storage CAN be 'permanent' using local storage. I have had data sit within IndexedDB for over 30 days on test devices, with and without internet ( after I first heard the rumor ).

The only way I could get it to drop from IndexedDB was by opening about hundred tabs and closing everything. There are ways to mitigate this. Depends on the needs of the application.

2) Does one need to be online for the app to load ??
I think I read that the html/js/css files that make up an app are not downloaded. Makes sense since there is no versioning information available in the manifest.

No? Load? Yes, you would need internet access to update prices or stock scrolls. A static app ( casual game ) would not need access to internet, unless it implemented a global ranking system ( offline, your global stat would stay until connection was established ).

3) If there is a manifest, does Apple respect all current implementation features of a true PWA ??
iOS has been pretty exemplar wrt PWAs which always made the lack of easily installed PWAs in Mac Safari a conundrum.

Have not had a chance to check out their (Apple's) new implementation yet. It is on the radar.

 

[R3k]

Are there any performance benefits to using a site as a web app? Or is it just slightly more refined GUI and the ability to launch via Spotlight?

I know using a web app and clicking any outside links then opens safari- and having to jump between the two programs is clunky. Sites such as Reddit will stay in Safari in my case.

 

[junolab]

Guys... The same functionality is and have been available for Chrome and Edge for years. It's nothing new. Only nice to being able to use Safari as an alternative.

 

[Boyd01]

Not sure when this rumor appeared.

Probably from Apple's own docs.

"Now ITP has aligned the remaining script-writable storage forms with the existing client-side cookie restriction, deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site. These are the script-writable storage forms affected (excluding some legacy website data types):

Indexed DB
LocalStorage
Media keys
SessionStorage
Service Worker registrations and cache"

Full Third-Party Cookie Blocking and More

This blog post covers several enhancements to Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in iOS and iPadOS 13.4 and Safari 13.1 on macOS to address our latest discoveries in the industry around tracking.

webkit.org

But if you read down further in that document, they say that web apps will not have that limitation.

"Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use. Their days of use will match actual use of the web application which resets the timer. We do not expect the first-party in such a web application to have its website data deleted."

However, the "gotcha" was that Safari didn't support web apps on the Mac, so there was no way to get around the 7-day limit. Now, I have never tested any of this on the Mac but had no reason to doubt it. If you have actually tested and found it to be untrue, that is interesting.

 

[cupcakes2000]

More clutter. Maybe just trying to incentive people to move away from Chrome because Safari on Mac is not as good.

clutter and chrome go hand in hand, so not sure what you’re saying here.

Guys... The same functionality is and have been available for Chrome and Edge for years. It's nothing new. Only nice to being able to use Safari as an alternative.

I think most people here know that. It’s also been available using the safari engine with 3rd party apps for years. But it’s nice to be native in safari on the Mac at last.

 

[MVMNT]

We had this in OSX Leopard 😅😅

 

[drumcat]

I'm not sure how this isn't just Fluid.app.

 

[mazz0]

I haven’t really been keeping up. Historically people have complained (legitimately, as far as I know) about Apple lacking support for many important features of PWAs. Is that still the case, or are they well supported now?

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Is this your first Apple keynote? They do this with at least 2 or 3 features every. single. year. It never fails and is a running joke at this point.

Apple are the kings of doing things last and then making everyone believe they did it first with a huge (and hilarious if you're in the know) marketing push.

 

[genovelle]

So there’s a feature Apple never focused on that other browsers had and enough users requested it to get their attention. Now they announce they listened and gave them what they said they wanted and they bashed for doing it, because the others already did it.

This is why Apple just does what they want. Some users are never satisfied. I’m personally petty, so I’d be on here calling people out. That amongst other things is why I’m not Apple’s CEO. Lol

 

[kkee]

So reading through the comments I get the impression this is basically creating a Safari shortcut on your dock, that opens a streamlined browser view, which may or may not be fully compatible with your keychain credentials? 😳

What am I missing?

Also the web dev can dictate the design for you. Maybe adding more commands icons like 'order', 'change theme;, 'sharing'. 'chatting', etc.