If you are using a mobile or computer and you often browse a website, you can install Progressive Web Apps that is provided by the website administrator. A Progressive Web App or PWA is generally available for Google Chrome browser for any operating system. That said, you can install a Progressive Web App on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, ChromeOS, etc. This post will let you know what Progressive Web Apps are and how to install it.

What are Progressive Web Apps?

Although several companies are working on this, the Progressive Web Apps are a part of Microsoft. After Universal Windows Platform and Metro Apps, Microsoft has been working on this project for a long time now. Not only Microsoft but also some other popular companies such as Google is working on PWAs for Android users.

Several times we open a website. As you already know, if you want to open a website, you need to open a browser. However, if you want to get rid of that process and open a website directly, you can take the help of Progressive Web Apps. As mentioned, you do not need to open a browser to open a website if you use PWAs.

Obviously, these web apps do use a browser, but users do not have to open the browser manually. Also, it works faster than using a web browser. The best thing about using a Progressive Web App is you can find an icon on your Desktop or Home Screen so that you can make use of it to open the website that you like. On the flip side, the drawback of such web apps is not all the websites have this. Therefore, you can find the certain web app on specific websites only. As of now, these following websites or companies have enabled Progressive Web Apps-

• Google maps
• Google Photos
• Twitter
• Android Messages
• Flipboard
• Telegram
• Uber
• Tinder
• Air France

And some more. Although Android users can add any website on the Home Screen without any problem, Windows and other computer platform users need to open those websites if they want to take a sneak peek of Progressive Web Apps.

How To Install Progressive Web Apps On Any OS

As mentioned previously, you must have Google Chrome on Windows, Mac, and Linux to install a PWA. Also, you need to visit any of the aforementioned websites to get the specific option as mentioned below. Make sure you are using the latest version of Google Chrome.

To get started, open the Chrome browser and visit a website. In this example, we are going to use Android Messages. Therefore, after opening this website, you need to go to Menu > Install Messages.

After confirming the installation, you should find two things. First, you can find a new icon on your Desktop named after the app you just installed. Second, you can find a new icon in chrome://apps/ window. You can use any of these two icons to open the Android Messages website. If you use the Apps panel icon, you need to open the browser. On the other hand, if you use the Desktop icon, there is no need to open the browser manually. It will do the job for you.

To uninstall an installed PWA, you need to open the chrome://apps/ window in Google Chrome browser > right-click on the app > select Remove from Chrome.

That’s it! I hope this simple tutorial will be helpful for you.