A Simple React Hook to Prompt iOS Users to Install Your Wonderful PWA.

Or, “HAHA, why isn’t this thing working?!”

First, a little backstory

A couple of years ago, I left the advertising agency world to focus on launching my startup, while subsidizing my income by freelancing. When I finally got around to setting up my site I decided to try my hand at React.

It should be easy to turn your website into a PWA, right?

Once I did that, the next obvious step was to make it an installable PWA, because the future of mobile apps is just a simple matter of adding a site manifest and some icons.

Easy right?

Small annoyance. Huge impact.

Although recent versions of iOS have better support for PWA’s, there’s still no built in prompt for users to install the app, as is present on Android. This all but defeats the purpose of an installable web app simply for the reason that iOS users won’t know they can install it!