But what are web apps exactly?
In iOS 16.4, Apple isadding support for notifications in web apps.
What Are Web Apps?
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A web app is an app that uses web technologies like HTML, Javascript, and so on.
The differences are subtle but important.
A web app gets its own storage space and can run when you are offline.
Taras Shypka / Unsplash
It also appears as an app in the iPhone (or iPad) app switcher.
All these combine to make web apps more than just a convenient bookmark on your Home screen.
And in fact, they can actually be pretty useful.
If you’re on the iPad, you get an iPad-sized Instagram app.
But until now, there was no way to get alerts or notifications from it.
The iOS 16.4 beta also supports Apple’s Focus modes (Do Not Disturb etc.)
and red alert badges on web app icons.
Also new is support for third-party browsers like Google’s Chrome to create home-screen web apps.
These changes are welcome, but why add them now?
It’s a mid-cycle iOS update, and nobody has really been asking for them.
One answer might be that such basic features are long overdue.
Background tasks would be one, for example.
A podcast player app could check for updates while not running.
And web apps are still ridiculously hard to install.
But the real winners will be the developers and, by extension, us users.
Web apps can be surprisingly good even under the current tight restrictions.
Opening them up would make them pretty compelling for everyone.
