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Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

OK, then the mechanism that let's websites prompts to install apps should be removed so apps are on the same level as web apps. Otherwise, the situation is part of the anti-competitive lock-in. If that won't be removed--and we know it won't be--then this feature needs to be added and will not make the situation worse: it will just mean that there is a hope that some of these websites prompt you to install a website instead of an app. If you want to stop getting prompted to install anything at all, then you need to either remove support for push notifications from apps--which obviously will never happen--or add support for push notifications to random "uninstalled" websites. (And if you don't like being prompted to activate push notifications for things, there should be a global switch to disable that feature... as they say: this isn't rocket science.)

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I'd love that, 90% of the ones I see are just from forum sites that use software that automatically provides some terrible "app" that no-one in their right mind would want, anyway.

IIRC (and I may be mis-remembering) they mostly just added that in the first place because sites were hacking in their own (which, on its own, might be fine), and other sites were abusing that dynamic for phishing or otherwise scummy purposes (not fine), since there was no standard look & behavior for those prompts. As long as installing PWAs requires user initiation with actions in the browser chrome, and can't be initiated by a link in site content, that shouldn't be a problem with PWAs.

> As long as installing PWAs requires user initiation with actions in the browser chrome, and can't be initiated by a link in site content, that shouldn't be a problem with PWAs.

And that’s all anyone is asking for, which would make PWAs equal to native apps in that regard.

Your fervent opposition higher in the thread seems like a different position.

I don't want INSTALL THE PWA spam-prompts everywhere. But, I like being able to open app store links from the browser. My ideal world is not terribly friendly to PWAs. I might use them, but I do not want them to be able to prompt installation actions in the browser. My persona UX is best if they cannot, but if "real" apps can. Second-best would be if neither can (and that's not that much worse—I'd be OK with this). Worst, by a long shot, is if both can.

If both require "share -> install app" or "share -> install web app" (depending on what the site offers) that would be probably my single most-favored solution. Totally fine, both on equal footing. I do not want PWAs to be able to trigger prompts or provide links that initiate PWA installation, even if native apps continue to be able to do so, "fairness" be damned (fairness, in this case, harms my UX because this functionality is guaranteed to be spammy—the "install the native app" prompts are already spammy enough, I don't need more of that). That would definitely make the mobile web even worse than it already is.

What I'm opposed to is letting PWAs prompt for installation. That would be bad, no question. Removing native apps' ability to do so is fine too, IMO, but would also require removing the ability to link to the app store at all to not open up other potential issues. If that's the cost of keeping PWAs from being able to prompt, cool, go for it. But please no PWA "click to install" prompts. No no no.

To be clear, this is all we’re talking about: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/promoting_a...

There is no shouting in these Smart App Banners. The entire user-visible experience is completely controlled by Apple. It is just a passive bar at the top of a webpage that informs the user of the option, which they can dismiss. It isn’t jumping up and down, it isn’t playing loud sound files at the user screaming at them to click it.

What really sucks is when websites like New Reddit provide their own custom modal prompts that cover the webpage and push you to the app, and they’re extremely hard to dismiss and oftentimes these half-baked implementations are broken even if you accept their suggestion to open the app. That type of prompt is not relevant to this discussion, at all. They can do that no matter what you think and no matter what Apple implements. The way you have been talking about these things makes me believe you think those prompts were what is under discussion. They’re not. Smart App Banners are not shouting “INSTALL THE APP!”

I’m personally surprised that Apple doesn’t offer a setting for Safari to disable Smart App Banners, which would be a simple way to stop annoying the few users who are bothered by them. I see at least one safari extension which claims to do this, but since this passive banner is extremely unobtrusive, why bother?

I’m immensely bothered by all sorts of ads and anti-features, but just knowing if there is an app is a legitimately useful thing, so this does not bother me. Even calling it a “prompt” is a stretch since it does not require any action to dismiss. It is a very light “call to action”, of course. If I’m browsing a website I don’t care about and they use this feature, I can ignore it or hide it. It doesn’t get in the way. I'm fairly certain you can even scroll down and the Smart App Banner will automatically scroll off the top of the screen, resizing the website to fill the entire screen.

> OK, then the mechanism that let's websites prompts to install apps should be removed so apps are on the same level as web apps.

AFAIK, such prompts are regular HTML with links to the AppStore. If so, how do you suggest Apple make it impossible to add those to a site?

> AFAIK, such prompts are regular HTML with links to the AppStore.

The ones under discussion are not: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/promoting_a...

Apple controls the experience. The developer just tells Apple which AppID is connected to this website, and Apple chooses how to present this information.

Smart App Banners also react to whether the app is currently installed or not, which random websites obviously should not be able to determine for privacy reasons.

It's actually tied to meta tags and the manifest.json. If you have the correct tags, Safari automatically shows the prompt if you don't have the app installed or the open with button to open in the already installed application.

For Chrome (desktop or mobile), if you have similar attributes in your manifest.json, then Chrome will show the 'Install' button to install the webapp to your home screen.

For PWAs you could simply not expose a hook to the developer that initiates the install process? It would be like if App Store pages didn’t have URLs. Have the install functionality added to the browser UI instead.

If PWAs weren‘t arbitrarily restricted there’d be no reason to link to the app store because…you’re already in the app.

Spamming users to hit the install button would be like spamming users to bookmark your website. That doesn’t seem to be a problem (though that’s probably because people don’t keep their bookmarks on their home screen)

The smart app banners are actually part of the browser. You add some meta tag to your HTML indicating your app ID and Safari shows a prompt outside of the web page to install or open it. Infuriatingly it can’t be disabled, and since it’s not part of the HTML I can’t use a content blocker to hide it.

Now there are a couple nice things:

- if an app is not installed you can dismiss for a particular site and you will never see it again. The website has no way to trigger it, the API is more like “Hey Safari I have an app” than “trigger a prompt”. - unfortunately if the app is installed you can’t dismiss the notification to open in the app. This I quite dislike because many sites have certain pages on their site with no equivalent in the app. Sometimes I have an app and just want to visit the site without being nagged.

Thanks for the info, charrondev and coder543

I still don’t see why “then the mechanism that let's websites prompts to install apps should be removed so apps are on the same level as web apps. Otherwise, the situation is part of the anti-competitive lock-in.”.

Web sites drive this, and can choose whether they let iOS show a “download the app” or a “install on home screen” option. It’s not Apple making that choice.

I’m fairly sure most people would prefer that Apple offers a version of the Smart App Banner that gives users a simpler install experience for PWAs. I think saurik was just humoring yamtaddle‘s perspective that PWAs should not be able to prompt for installation ever, and pointing out that it would only be fair to apply their restriction to websites offering native apps too.

Right now, the install process for PWAs is needlessly obtuse compared to what users experience with a Smart App Banner.

I saw someone elsewhere comment on the number of taps required with both methods, and I would point out that not all taps are equal. The simple, guided flow that the Smart App Banner gives users is tremendously easier for users to figure out than the “Add to Home Screen” flow that currently exists.

It'd be Apple artificially giving native apps a boost / penalizing PWAs, like they've been doing for 15 years. Sites want to get on the home screen. If the only viable way to get to the home screen is to make a native app, the site will either be forced to implement a native app for no reason or be at a disadvantage.

Apple pretty obviously can support a similar UI for PWAs as for native apps. If they don't, it's just them doing the bare minimum required by regulators while still keeping PWAs as an uncompetitive second class citizen. And if the argument is that these banners are bad UX and will be abused (because that's always Apple's argument for why something should not be allowed in browsers), then they should own up to it being bad UX for native apps too and remove it.

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