Service Workers do not a Progressive Web App make

I hear this question a lot from Ionic developers: “iOS doesn’t support service workers, can I still build Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) on iOS”?

The answer is absolutely “yes!” Service Workers enable mobile web apps to better cache data, handle push notifications, and run background tasks. None of those things are required for a large portion of the functionality of a mobile web app.

In fact, if we take the “Progressive” part of Progressive Web Apps in the spirit it was meant, that means our app can progressively enhance itself when running in an environment with Service Workers available, like Android. When Service Workers aren’t available, our app can still work great, albeit by eschewing the above Service Worker features. And when Service Workers are eventually supported, our app can update and take advantage of them, adding cool new features to our app!

In my opinion, PWA development is more of a mindset than a set of required APIs. Today’s mobile devices and browsers are capable of amazing, native-quality experiences. Embracing PWAs means embracing and believing that you, too, can build native quality mobile experiences in the browser across all the major devices and operating systems. That’s what PWAs are truly about.

Now get building!