How to Make Your Website an iOS and Android Mobile App Quickly

A clear explanation of how easy PWA functions are to integrate to give your website super-powers

I believe Progressive Web Apps are a fantastic bit of tech that many people miss and hence way over-complicate their initial web app.

If you want to…

• give (some) users push notifications
• allow offline use
• have your website easily be an app
• have your app be super small in storage size (as it is dependent on the browser’s runtime engine — not needing its own)
• have one repository and language (.js) for your iOS, Android, and web app

…you may want to try building a PWA.

What do you need?

• A manifest.manifest file
• A service-worker.js file
• Three lines added to you index.js

That is it.

If it is so easy why isn’t everyone doing it?

Because you need to understand what is going on- otherwise development and bugs can be tricky.

Service workers are tricky because they exist as installed code in the user's browser. They install in on the first load, and then can’t be removed until a new version has been installed. As such, they can be tricky…