topic Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop? in Discussions

How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 11:52:28 GMT

Latest update August 21, 2025: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/103673#M40222

Previous update June 25, 2025: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/99440/highlight/true#M38679

Previous update March 17, 2025: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/90538/highlight/true#M35105

Previous previous update February 4, 2025: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/85327/highlight/true#M32616

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Original post June 21, 2024:

Hi everyone, my name is David Rubino and I’m a product manager for Firefox. As the Firefox leadership team mentioned in the Reddit AMA last week, we’re taking a fresh look at Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), which have long been a top request from our Mozilla Connect community. Today I want to share a concept that aims to address some of this feedback.

As you may know, we built a prototype for desktop PWAs a few years ago, and unfortunately user testing on our solution showed confusion and lack of perceived value. We didn’t release it because we didn’t have an approach that could meet the needs of power users without causing confusion among the broader user base. Recently, other browsers have implemented or enhanced their approach to PWAs, for example by making it easy to install any website as a web app (even if no PWA manifest is provided), and by running web apps in the same session as normal browser tabs. I was a user of these features, and so when I joined the Firefox Product Management team last year, I decided to take a fresh look at how Firefox might approach the problem.

In this post you will see that I don’t use the term “PWA” and instead stick with the more generic “web app”. While there are some working definitions for what a PWA is and is not, most of the feedback from the Firefox community are requests for specific capabilities. So when considering what Firefox should do, I’m focusing on how we can offer features that help you get a more app-like experience for any website you choose, when you choose.

There are many specific requests in the thread, but viewed through this lens a few emerge:

Web apps should appear with their own icons alongside traditional apps, both in places where you launch apps and where running apps are shown.
Web apps should remain open until you close them. You should not be able to “navigate away” from them like a web page.
Like many mobile apps, desktop web apps should be able to handle links to their website in lieu of having them opened in a normal browser window.

It’s possible to take the web app concept further than is needed, into the realm of making web apps be as app-like as possible. This can make it seem like you’re not using a web browser or a website at all. Some examples of this might be having PWAs be installed and uninstalled using the OS, removing all or nearly-all of the browser “frame”, and limiting access to common browser features like bookmarks and search. While some of these may turn out to be beneficial, it’s not a goal to make it feel like you’re not in Firefox.

In fact, contrary to the notion that web apps should be “installed” like regular apps, a core idea of this concept is that running a web app should be thought of as moving a tab to your taskbar or dock... a one-step operation that can be undone just as easily.

So what might this experience look like? Let’s look at the following topics:

Moving into and out of a web app “mode”
Offering a different browser UI for a web app
Browsing within and between sites
Integrating with the operating system

Moving into and out of a web app “mode”

As stated above, you should be able to take any tab and move it into web app mode in one step. When you take this action, the tab would be moved into a new web app window, maintaining the state of the web page entirely. You could even be watching a video, and it won’t miss a frame. There would be no setup. Each website will have some preferences associated with it, but the intent will be to have sensible defaults that work for most people, informed by a manifest if the site offers one. Moving a tab back out of this mode will be just as simple.

Offering a different browser UI for a web app

Web apps are still websites in a web browser, so the goal will be to fully maintain access to features that help you with the website itself, while de emphasizing features that are about managing multiple websites. Some examples:

No tabs or bookmarks bar by default, but these could be enabled in web app preferences
The main toolbar would be fully enabled, including the address bar and extensions
A new toolbar section would show the icon of the website prominently, clearly indicating you’re in web app mode for a given site. This section would offer access to settings and controls for the web app.
In lieu of a new tab button, there would be buttons to open a new tab in a normal Firefox window, or a new instance of the current web app.
The address bar would not be read-only, offering easy access to Firefox Suggest and the ability to search. Web pages opened from here would land in a new tab in a regular Firefox window.

Browsing within and between sites

One of the key differences between a normal mode webpage and a web app is that you shouldn’t be able to “navigate away” from a web app. To exit a web app you have to explicitly close it. To accomplish this, each web app would be a “single site browser”. Navigations within the current website will remain in the app, and navigations outside the current website will open in a normal Firefox window. There will be exceptions to help with login flows and redirections so that a web app feels as much as possible like an app that only opens a browser when opening a truly external page.

We would also introduce “link capture”, which would allow a web app to register itself to handle URLs within its scope. For example, if you click on a link to reddit.com in a normal Firefox window, the link would open in the Reddit web app. This behavior is analogous to how mobile browsers redirect links to registered mobile apps.

Integrating with the operating system

On Windows, it is straightforward to show web apps separately on the taskbar using differentiated icons, to allow them to be pinned, to show them in the Start menu, in the ALT+TAB and window snap experience, and so on. This allows quick access to web apps using the same surfaces used to run or switch between regular apps. By “leveling up” to the taskbar websites you leave running and revisit often, you can save time over hunting for them in Firefox.

This behavior may be more challenging to implement on macOS and is likely to have some limitations comparatively. You should expect that if we build a prototype, it will begin as a Windows-only feature. Once proven we would bring it to our other desktop platforms leveraging the features supported by them.

Please let us know what you think!

I am hopeful Firefox can bring a web app experience to the desktop that will feel natural to all users, while supporting the needs of our power users. In particular, I think we can improve upon the current experience offered by other web browsers by offering one-step setup, retaining access to core browser features, and allowing links to be “captured” automatically.

We are looking to make progress in this area soon, so I would love to get a discussion going about what is right and wrong and missing from this set of ideas. While I did read every post in the Ideas thread, I am aware I did not address every topic mentioned, so please especially bring up what I skipped that is important to you.

Thanks in advance!

-David Rubino
Product Manager
Mozilla Firefox

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

jscher2000 — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 19:37:18 GMT

Hi David, I think that will be useful. I had three thoughts while reading this:

(1) The site-dedicated behavior of the single-document web app window sounds similar to a pinned tab, which makes sense considering that pinned tabs were originally called app tabs.

I think it would make sense to enhance the functionality of pinned tabs in parallel with the web app windows to minimize unnecessary differences. You might also want to allow a user the ability to move a web app window to a pinned tab in a regular window, and vice versa, to move a pinned tab to a web app window. And it may make sense to treat the two the same for session restore purposes.

(2) If I capture links and dedicate them to the web app window, I may be annoyed by losing my place rather than having a new tab open.

Could the captured links be queued for user action to display rather than triggering immediate navigation? Perhaps this could be managed with a toolbar button list or a sidebar.

(3) Enabling the address bar and main toolbar would address complaints about extensions not operating as expected in the PWA prototype. I hope the team will consider whether to make the same features operable in feature-specified pop-up windows for consistency.

(For reference, I mean the type of window opened by the third link here: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/popit.html)

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 16:16:00 GMT

regarding links to the outside of the app: make sure to pass them to the OS, don't keep them trapped inside of one browser

user is allowed to choose the default handler however they like and one of the big issues with Chromium PWA is the fact they keep navigation trapped and external links open in the PWA browser instead of the default handler

another issue I have related to that comes from Fenix: when you tap external link in it it opens custom tab "within" PWA instead of passing it through the OS and I'd love that changed

also it feels like Fenix has a special list of apps that can be run in PWA mode and all others only do a shortcut pin, even when they work in Chromium browsers

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

dannycolin — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 18:06:17 GMT

Offering a different browser UI for a web app

Would it also support Container Tabs? For example, I regularly use 2 separated gmail accounts that I open in a different container so I can have them open side-by-side instead of switching accounts in gmail itself. With Webapp Mode, I'd still want to retain the ability to have two separated single-tab browser.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Oneeyedziggy — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 19:48:42 GMT

I'm working on a PWA now and would love to be able to send notifications without involving a server... It's nuts that the current APIs seemingly require a server to trigger the push notification api to wake the app to send a notification...

Also silly you can't really schedule notifications, just setTimeouts and write a custom system to manage and interrupt/re-schedule them if you don't just want a potentially unlimited number of long-running setTimeouts... But that seems like the only option for the time being

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

amanitamc — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 20:35:10 GMT

What is a "lieu"? Please use simpler speech I never heard that word in my life.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

RabN — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:54:30 GMT

I'm sure that you have already taken a look at the PWAs for Firefox addon. It accomplishes most if what you describe for the end user. Their implementation allows web apps to run in their own "containers," which is helpful, but could be improved. Web apps should be able to use addons if desired, which should be customizable for each app.

Apps should have the ability to open links in the default browser if chosen.

I love that you will plan to use an implementation that will allow for any site to be installed as an app. That is a key feature because many sites that are designed as apps may not be set up as PWAs.

An address bar in a web app makes no sense me. Having it available in a menu or behind a click is understandable, but I would like to use a webapp as a standalone app as much as possible, not waste screen real estate on browser elements. If an app is well designed, there should never be a need to interact with an address bar or other browser elements (with the likely exception of the back navigation). PWAs for Firefox handles this very well.

Web apps should be easy to manage through a settings menu. I should be able to add or delete an app from a list, as well as adjust individual settings, such as whether it is running in an individual container or one of my existing containers, which addons are active in the app, permissions like camera and mic, and ideally even options like changing the default zoom and text size, or toggling hardware acceleration. I've found it is also essential to be able to change the icon manually.

Others may find it useful to combine/merge webapps into a browser window as tabs, but such a feature has no value to me. As much as possible, a web app should behave as an installed app, with the browser acting as a backbone, and as invisible as possible.

It's a small thing, but a web app window should open in the same state and size/aspect that it was last closed.

That's my wishlist and suggestions. Some of it may run counter to the direction you are headed, but I hope you'll be able to implement as much as possible. This is a big leap in the right direction! Thank you for the work you do.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

00FF00 — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 04:31:14 GMT

basically it just means alternatively, or instead of. which fun fact, TIL where the word instead comes from

>Like many mobile apps, desktop web apps should be able to handle links to their website in lieu of having them opened in a normal browser window.

so that is basically saying "desktop web apps should be able to handle links to their website [as opposed to / alternatively to / instead of/ rather than] a normal browser window.

in other, other words, "desktop web apps should handle links to their website inside the PWA/web-app and not open in a normal browser window"

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

00FF00 — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 04:31:46 GMT

i use PWA's quite a bit via edge currently, for certain websites, but would definitely use them in firefox instead of edge if it was implemented. i guess the thing i would like is the ease of setup like edge has where its basically a one click step, and since im always focused on the cosmetic differences of websites lol maybe have a way for each installed webapp to have a simple setup for using its own font and website color layout, along with if it does have a toolbar (which i think it should have some kind of toolbar, just no url bar) allowing a different theme to be set, maybe using the firefox colors theme builder add on? i guess im not sure how complicated that all would be - but it would be neat!

i guess at that point it would almost be like having multiple installations of firefox, like i have the regular version and then another version, and they each have different website color/font layouts and different themes

also from the discussion thread on reddit sharing this post:

>from u/feelspeaceman: Here we go PWA, it's pretty nice to have as someone who regularly using Floorp's PWA, having web app pinning in Taskbar can be lifesaver, for example pinning Weather App, World Clock App or Photopea, it's really helpful and it improves my workflow.

>from u/oneeyedziggy: Working on a PWA now and would love offline scheduled notifications to be more possible... Its absurd that the current apis basically preclude something as simple as an alarm app or anything with scheduled reminders without a server sending push notifications ( i think... I'm also still working around the rediculous state of the notification API on Android vs desktop )

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 07:15:31 GMT

Apologies. It's just a different way of saying "instead of".

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Rayke — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 12:00:37 GMT

In Firefox I use Javascript bookmarks which open the pages I wan't to act like PWAs as popups. This gives me almost everything I want in a PWA.

When I click a link in the popup it opens the link in a new tab in the main browser instance. The URL is immutable and acts like a title bar for me so that I can see the domain.

As a Sway WM user the main thing that I want is a constant, predictable appid/class-instance that is always the same for every launch of a window through it's entire lifetime which is what Chromium based PWAs have.

I imagine that would probably be nescessary anyway if you want to implement custom icons under linux since that would probably be tied to the window class.

I use those unique properties to automatically move windows to a specific workspace on my 3-monitor setup and it greatly reduces the amount of window management I have to manually attend to.

I have a workaround for Firefox but it is not elegant and requires a bash script running in the background to detect the windows and watch for my specific title that I provided in my javascript bookmark.

The other things follow what everyone else wants, mainly to be able to launch the PWA from my desktop environment instead of having to do it from Firefox.

I build nightly myself and have been enjoying the new functionality including the new sidebar tabs. This is even more exciting, it would make my year.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

bel57 — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 21:39:24 GMT

Stumbled on this topic while looking for a way to get PWA and push notifications through Firefox and Gecko based browsers. I'm glad Mozilla is considering web apps, this is great news and that would make a lot of users make the switch from Chromium browsers.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

BiORNADE — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 00:34:22 GMT

I've made a kind of a concept regarding the generic topbar (for the non-PWA webapps); but just all the notes that I do know or understood

I do also agree with RabN to every suggestion and I wanted to get some elemental changes from the post, mix with some of my other ideas and have the result.

The first 3 are according to what David commented (not sure if I'm missing one).
The last one is according to RabN, with some other adjustments by me

(P.S: the color is the background most apparent color, just like what Google Chrome does)

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

ffffff — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 19:31:23 GMT

Glad to hear Mozilla is taking another look at PWAs, and even more so that the plans seems promising. I don't use PWAs on desktop yet, but I'm excited to try out Firefox's when they're available.

As for feedback, since I'm not a current desktop PWA user, take this with a grain of salt: I'm not sure that I get the address bar part:

- The address bar would not be read-only, offering easy access to Firefox Suggest and the ability to search. Web pages opened from here would land in a new tab in a regular Firefox window.

Is that really such a common use case, wanting to open new Firefox windows from your PWA address bar? It feels like you'd just be adding a big waste of space for many users. Chat web apps are a case where I don't see the point of having a URL bar, at all. I think it's good to keep it available in some manner, e.g. behind a menu, just not visible at all times.

I think I need to take a look at what other browsers are doing before saying anything else.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 01:00:11 GMT

Hello Jefferson, and thanks for taking a look at this! Sorry it took me so long to circle back.

First about pinned tabs... I've already got a Jira ticket in the backlog for updating pinned tabs to keep them in sync with what we do with web apps. To start I have two things in that ticket:

1. Keep the pinned tab scoped to the current site even if you use the address bar, bookmark, etc. to navigate.

2. Add link capture as an option for pinned tabs

Let me know if there are other specific ideas you have here.

Second, moving tabs... the current notion is to allow users to move tabs using drag/drop and menu options, subject to rules about scope. So you could always move a tab from a web app window to a normal window, but you could only move a tab from a normal window to a web app window if the tab matched the scope of the web app window. Moving a tab from a web app window to a new window would create a second window for the web app.

I love the idea of integrate with pinned tabs as well / instead. For one, it makes total sense to create a web app window if you drag a pinned tab to its own window. I've added that to the ticket. I'm a little less certain about the other direction... my inclination is that a web app tab dragged into a normal window should become a pinned tab only as a user option, or if the web app originated as a pinned tab in the first place. What do you think?

Third, the "link capture may feel disruptive" problem. I agree that it could. For now I'm comfortable with link capture being on or off for a given site, but it could make sense to an an option to "ask" or "queue". I added a ticket for that to the backlog.

Finally, about access to address bar and extensions on regular popup windows. To be honest, I don't know the history here and I don't own this... I'll have to ask internally. I do see 1849495: "Add-on buttons don't appear in popup windows". The suggested solution of adding just the extension button makes sense to me... it keeps the "minimal window minimal" as Tooru says in the bug. As for making the address bar editable, I don't see a suggestion in Bugzilla for that (I could be missing it). Would you be comfortable filing one with type = enhancement, product = Firefox, and component = address bar? If not I can...

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 01:23:45 GMT

Thanks for looking at this with me, and sorry for the slow reply.

First, about passing links to the OS... my expertise is Windows, and I'm not aware of a way in Windows to associate a URL domain with a handler. For example, I don't think I can install the Netflix app on Windows, and then have Windows send all links to netflix.com to the Netflix app. Am I wrong on Windows? Much less familiar with macOS and Linux. Is this possible there? In any case, if any of the desktop OS platforms do support this, let me know and I'll poke at it more.

Regarding the special mode on Android for handling external links, that sounds like fair feedback. Desktop Chrome and Edge do something similar, and I am personally not a fan. Would you be comfortable logging this to Bugzilla as type=enhancement, product=fenix, and component=PWA? If not, I can log it for you.

As for the "special list" of apps which Fenix installs as a PWA versus a shortcut, I believe the distinction is that only websites which provide a PWA manifest are installed as PWAs. I certainly understand the suggestion to change this as well, and I'd ask you to open a bug on that as well (or ask me to).

Thanks! -David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 04:45:06 GMT

Yes, I'd like to see this, and I have a backlog placeholder Jira ticket that just says "Container integration". How do you think it should work? Some ideas:

Certainly when a tab is moved to its own app window, if that tab has affinity to a container, the web app should remember that affinity on subsequent launches.
Seems like a container could also uniquely define a web app... so it would be OK for two web apps to have identical scopes as long as they had different containers. In this model, your two Gmail tabs would become different apps, each pinned separately.
Or perhaps, it would be better for a single app to support multiple containers. In this case, launching the app would launch two windows, each which shares an icon, but the tab in each of the two windows would have a different container.
To make this make sense, a web app window would probably need to have an affordance to simply create a new container which shares the same home page. Honestly, we'd want to describe it as something like "log into this app as a different user", rather than using anything like the current container UX.

What do you think? What am I missing?

-David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 04:56:31 GMT

Hey, this is interesting... I know a little bit about how this works, but not a lot. Help me understand.

I'm aware of the Notification API... showing a notification like so:

const notification = new Notification("Hi there!", { body: "This is a notification.", icon: "icon.png" // Optional icon });

I don't think this requires a server. Does this work for your scenario? I assume not otherwise you wouldn't be posting this... so help me understand what about it doesn't work.

(By the by, I'm completely aware that there are 100 experts I work with that can answer this too... but I'm just not one of them... thanks in advance for helping me learn)

-David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 06:05:30 GMT

I'm pretty sure per domain handlers are available since win8, but the app has to be specifically listed as allowed by the website (probably dev mode apps are extempted from that or this requirement is enforced by the store itselt, not the OS)

but my main issue was: if I create PWA in Edge *all HTTP/HTTPS* links are trappped and whatever I click opens in Edge, I'd like external links going outside the PWA to be passed to the system to keep the user in control, if they want different default handler for http and https that should be respected

I can add the ticket in bugzilla myself, just have to remember about it when I'm at my PC

do you know about any extra requirements to pin PWA on Fenix? I can't get my app to do so while Chromium does it as expected

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 06:16:50 GMT

Thanks so much for taking the time to weigh in here. I'll try to address everything quickly.

Running web apps in their own containers

This isn't what I was thinking as a default. With "total cookie protection" I'm not sure containers have a lot of utility outside of having more than one of them for one website (to manage multiple logins, or to be able to see both a logged-in state and not-logged-in state at the same time). I would like to support these scenarios (see my response above) but anything beyond that I would need some additional perspective on. If you think there's something I not considering, please let me know.

Use addons if desired...

Absolutely, and comes for "free" in the current idea.

...customizable for each app

What kind of customization are you looking for?

Open links in the default browser

So do you mean... even if the default browser isn't Firefox? If so, I'd be curious to hear about the use case. If you just mean "in Firefox" then OK, which of the following is the closest to what you mean?

a) Links from example.com to another page in example.com stay insider the app, and links from example.com to external.com open in Firefox

b) A user can right click on a link from example.com to another page on example.com, and choose "Open in Firefox"... thus overriding the default handling

c) A web app can target any link at a normal Firefox window by specifying something like target=browser in the markup.

Web apps shouldn't have an address bar

You won't be the only one who is thinking this! I completely understand. Here's my reasoning:

An address bar is needed in order to see where you are, which can be important for security/safety online.
The address bar element contains a bunch of controls, from site settings to page action buttons for extensions, to simple copy and paste, that are generally still relevant in a web app. We could recreate these functions in a new UI... but that's a heavy lift compared to just displaying the address bar we already have.
Once it's there, having it be read-only is frustrating. For one, people do edit URLs in a way that doesn't navigate away from a site. And for those URLs that don't, I think we can make it clear in some way visually that following them will open a Firefox window.

I like options though, so I have recorded the request to turn this off in a Jira ticket.

Managing settings

Yes, having a list of installed apps seems basic to me. I could imagine testing out some concepts without building this, but anything beyond that would need a management UI. As for particular settings... see my previous questions on containers and addons... and then I have other questions:

a) Text size and hardware acceleration are very rarely changed settings. Why do you think these are useful?

b) What's the situation in which you would want to customize the icon? Generally a browser's job is to present a website in the way intended by its creators. For that reason, I'm hesitant to offer this.

Save zoom, window size, and window position

Yep, makes sense to me. Added to Jira ticket.

Feel as much like an app as possible

Well, as you saw in my post I have a different hypothesis... I'm inclined toward making it feel like web apps are just tabs that have been moved to your taskbar/dock and can be moved back. I think more users will understand this. However... if we do this right you'll be a few settings changes away from being able to think of these like truly separate apps. I'll keep this post (and others I'm sure will follow it) in mind as we move forward so we don't move past the point where you will find this suitable.

Thanks again! -David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 06:24:01 GMT

I think the point was to schedule the notification without having to keep the script running, something more akin to WebExtensions alarms that are events handled by the browser, not by the in-page timer

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 08:14:08 GMT

passing external.com to the default handler has multiple use cases:

someone may be using one browser for PWA and another as a default due to the differences between their capabilities

in my case I use Browser Router as a default handler and it passes the link further based on different rules, it may pass it to an app that can't be set as a default handler, it may pass it to a different profile, it may pass it to a different browser

but the most important thing is making it seamless: if a webapp is meant to behave like an app it needs to behave like an app and pass links to the default handler, that's what people expect

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 00:08:48 GMT

Thanks for taking a look at this! I love the idea of per-window themes, and I've added it to the list. In the meantime, applying a color tint to the window automatically (based on the icon perhaps) might be something we can do even earlier

-David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 00:28:53 GMT

Thanks for weighing in. The level of customization you're describing is impressive. Linux is currently not in my wheelhouse, but I've started a Jira ticket recording this and what I assume will be other thoughts about Linux.

For your existing solution, do you need the appid / class-instance to be static just for the lifetime of the window? Or every time a given site is launched? Either way, I'm wondering if it isn't something you could manage with a privileged extension. Since you're a dedicated Nightly user, you can write such extensions for your own use.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 00:31:13 GMT

Hello, and thanks for stumbling in! Can you help me understand what is and isn't working about notifications today? I'm aware that Firefox is limited to handling push notifications only when it's running, but otherwise I don't fully understand the gaps, and how they relate to the topic of web apps. Would appreciate any insight you can give.

Thanks! -David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 00:40:42 GMT

Thanks for sharing! I've saved the concepts for our reference. Much appreciated.

FWIW, I think the color of the title bar in Chrome is determined by the theme_color property in the PWA manifest. Right?

-David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 00:45:25 GMT

Thanks! See my respond above (https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-the/m-p/61618/highlight/true#M21573) about why I'm proposing the address bar be visible. I do think many people who have never thought about PWAs won't understand what's happening when they see their websites in a window that has ceased to look like a web browser. If someone who isn't familiar with the concept asks themselves "is this a website or an app" I want the answer in our case to be "it's clearly a website". Customization for those who "get it" and just want to save real-estate makes total sense though.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Rayke — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 00:54:42 GMT

I need the appid/class-instance to always be the same. If you look at how a Chromium PWA works, the window gets an app_id (Wayland)/class-instance(X11) that is generated per manifest when the PWA is installed. The window will forever be identified by that generated value and will be the same even if I uninstall the PWA and re-install it. It is probably a hash or something involving the domain name.

For Example. If I install Fosstodon as a PWA using Chrome the identifiers are:

For Chrome started with Wayland support:
app_id="chrome-dkoiajbhajakglgcmkbhmcphnoiempab-Default"

For X11
class="Google-chrome-unstable" instance="crx_dkoiajbhajakglgcmkbhmcphnoiempab"

As for handling it with a privileged extension, I am not sure how that would work (I have never heard of a "privileged" extension) or if it would be better than what I currently have. I wrote a local extension that creates the JavaScript Bookmarks based on the domain name only so that Sway at some point sees a fixed name even if it is changed later in the window's lifetime. (e.g. fosstodon.org would briefly have a title of "fosstodon-org" when the popup is opened). I then monitor a socket with bash that runs in the background watching for a window title "fosstodon-org". Once it is seen, the bash script moves it to the appropriate workspace. The main issue is that since the window starts off just being called "Firefox Nightly". It briefly flashes and resizes the windows on my current workspace until it is changed to "fosstodon-org" by my bookmark JavaScript. My bash script then sees it and performs the operations on it, causing the original workspace to redraw and resize the windows on it again, since the popup window has been moved. For Chrome PWAs I see the unique ID before the window is even created, so the window can be initially drawn on the correct workspace without needing to be moved by my script since I can use a regular Sway window rule for that.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 01:02:06 GMT

Ahh I see! Funny story... when I first started working at Mozilla, I was an Edge PWA user and I had to write myself an extension (for Edge) to solve this exact problem!

While I'm completely onboard with the user being in control, I know from experience that a lot of users aren't as in control of their own default browser as we might hope they are. I think linking out of Firefox and into a different browser is probably best available as an option in Firefox rather than the default. I've logged the suggestion. (And feel free to DM me if you want to chat about a Chromium extension that relays clicks from PWAs to the OS default browser)

I'll see if I can get you some support for PWAs on Fenix.

-David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 01:11:11 GMT

Makes sense. I don't know the answer here. I will have to consult internally and find someone or somewhere to get support.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 01:14:17 GMT

OK, understood. See my reply elsewhere. I think the case is quite valid and have filed this in our system.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 05:36:57 GMT

maybe you are right, but if we're talking about people with less control and experience... keeping the default as staying inside but also showing some call to action the first time (or until they decide to dismiss it permanently) letting them know they can easily switch it to a default handler may be useful

people tend to never visit settings and would rather complain and abandon a good product that has defaults they don't like than finetune it so letting them know they can may be useful

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

lengau — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 15:10:33 GMT

Here's a brief, half-baked thought: could you use site-limited container tabs for this? Although it's not actually a PWA, right now I have Discord set up in a site-limited container tab that I have pinned. I'd love to move that tab to its own "app window" though. That doesn't have to look like the electron app or like Chrome's PWA windows - I'm happy for it to be "clearly a website" as mentioned above, but I would like the following features in that window:

Links that leave the site get opened in a new tab in a sensible non-app window (whatever is used when opening from an external application is probably the most sensible choice)
Links to this site always go into this sort of app window (details would I guess be decided by the `launch_handler` manifest item).
I do want access to extensions from this window
Preferably, I'd be able to hide the tab bar entirely and just use the system titlebar

The most important parts for me are 1 and 2, as these make the PWA "work like an app" in the ways that I'd like them to.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 17:31:11 GMT

An internal expert on PWAs for Firefox on Android looked into this a bit, and filed this bug:

1906681: "Install menu not available when PWA is detected". If you think this is your bug, then let me know. If you think it's something else... can you share your site (a DM is fine if you wish) and we'll take a look at how it's handled?

Thanks,

-David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

BiORNADE — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 16:15:55 GMT

What kind of customization are you looking for?

I'm just here to complement (not what RabN is thinking of), but there's one feature missing in almost every single browser; which is the option to be able to change the icon, if the program will run when starting the computer, if allowing extensions or not, etc. (kinda like some of what Rayke described)
Here's a mspaint edit I made in 5 minutes to demonstrate my 2 navbar ideas:

It's true that some divisions might happen if everything just happens to be the same interface...
~~Like, if you use the same interface for ALL webapps, including "PWA Powered" ones (native PWA support), it wouldn't look great:~~

EDIT: This part aged faster than milk; it actually looks good than what I thought originally.

I guess some more simple appearance like this would make the PWA Powered apps look better, despite it kinda challenge the Firefox feel/looking:

Consider this as a grain of salt; tho it looks more of a Undistractive mode than the one made above, but that might not be what RabN is looking for

An address bar is needed in order to see where you are, which can be important for security/safety online.

Make the name of the Window name show up a similar box from the image when hovering for 2 seconds:

Also, you can recycle the Sidebar codes to open certain websites externally; besides, no other browser prompts to change the URL, and I have never of a concern about that (but maybe when double clicking, as a feature)

We could recreate these functions in a new UI... but that's a heavy lift compared to just displaying the address bar we already have.

Many of the elements can be reused; instead of developing many new icons and such, you can directly take the Firefox icons and (mostly) reuse them for the page UI too, making it compatible with CSS themes! Well... Just in theory, as some elements would look way better when modified slightly.
For the title, just use the one from the main page or just the title. If it is PWA Powered,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would guess the theme itself would take about 450KB or less.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

BiORNADE — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 18:21:10 GMT

Might be, because creating an app as a shortcut has this result (the bottom color not applied). It does change the color in PWA mode tho:

The Android version however, does this:

I'm not sure if that is defined by the website itself (or if it is a sort of telemetry).
If that's the case, then an offline workaround could be used... But that would take time to implement, whether with AI or not, since changing it too much would be distractive, and might be performance issues with lower end computers too

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Blisterexe — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 17:36:04 GMT

Not op, but the way i see it option 2 is the best one.

Like, when you create a webapp, it asks you the website and what container it should be in.

The webapp then always opens in that container, two webapps from the same site but different containers are differenciated by a little icon in the corner of the icon, kind of like how ios shows what app a messaging app notification comes from (pic related)

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

KellyC82 — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 22:30:27 GMT

the forum ate my comment when it took me through the new account setup when I hit post, so thanks for that. Forgot I wasn't on my main FF profile...

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

KellyClowers — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 22:44:03 GMT

Anyway, my comment was going to be something like...

Do things as much like https://github.com/filips123/PWAsForFirefox as possible.

They have good ideas about how to allow customization for dealing with tabs, address bar, etc

About the only thing missing in PWAsForFirefox (unsurprisingly) is support for minimize to tray.

The PWA should appear in the OS list of installed programs, and in general should act like any other program.

Removing the PWA should *not* be as easy dragging and dropping a tab. I never want a PWA to disappear back into my main browser window, if I did I would have just opened a new window.

If you want to do weird stuff with PWAs that are more like just tabs, at least preserve (or improve) the access that allows PWAsForFirefox to keep making their version. Maybe add APIs to WebExt to allow for extensions to have more control over PWAs, so you can have the mainline version, and if people want something else, they can easily develop/use it as a webext.

Also PWAs on Android already exist happily, and mostly really good, just it would be nice to be able to semi-automatically PWA-ify a page that doesn't have a manifest. Currently FF on Android just falls back to adding a web shortcut to the homescreen, which just opens a tap in the main browser. Which is a handy thing to have sometimes, but shouldn't be conflated with adding a PWA.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

RabN — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 23:06:57 GMT

Thanks for the comments! Control of containers is useful to me mostly due to logins. Say, for example, a user wants to use Gmail from one account and watch YouTube from another account (or none). It doesn't necessarily need to launch by default in a "new" container when created, but one of the perks of running them as webapps is that they are kept separate from my browsing activity in that sense. OTOH, some users may want all of their accounts connected across apps?

Glad that the addons are already in process! By customizable, I mean that say for example I use Dark Reader to ease the eyestrain on some sites, but on a particular app I don't want it; or say that my adblocker interferes with a certain webapp. Or I have a YouTube addon that I only want to use when it is in the app. The ability to set which addons are active in a per-app basis would be helpful. I may want them to behave differently than my browser.

For links I meant situation "a". Although some people do use multiple browsers. For a long time I had FF as my default browser but ran webapps through Edge. I would have liked those links to open in my default instead of in Edge 😉

Many websites have bad, outdated favicons, and they are not always well-suited to resizing. If I have an app pinned to my menu bar to stare at all day long, I don't want to look at pixelated garbo. So I often change them through the OS - that's just my personal experience. However, I do understand your point about the responsibility between browser and site creator.

Yes, a basic UI, like a Settings page/tab is exactly what I would hope for in a perfect world. As for some of the options I mentioned, some sites have small fonts and a user may want them bigger, or I might have an app that I typically share in video meetings and want the font to be larger and more readable for sharing. I'm don't personally have a use, but some people use webapps to run games or graphics editors and may want options like acceleration only in those cases. These are admittedly niche, but may help to differentiate this from other browsers (as long as we are re-imagining what a webapp could be).

Thanks again for listening so thoughtfully to comments from the community! We really appreciate the work you are doing... even if we can get a little "passionate" at times!

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 09:08:36 GMT

this seems like it may be the same issue, hard to tell without debugging further, but the symptoms would check out

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Ponda — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 10:06:06 GMT

Please see Webapp Manager for implementation attempt on Linux. Installing add-ons, changing settings etc. isn't as straightforward as in pure Firefox and notably, clicking on the link doesn't open it in the browser but in a web app tab, which is especially annoying considering tab and address bars are hidden making navigation difficult. Other than this annoyance, however, it serves the purpose well (as well as providing support for wide range of browsers).

Personally, I'd argue that while address bar should at the very least be option, customizable tab bar (with settings, add-ons etc.) would be very useful for some use cases. Notably, separate extensions, Firefox and extensions settings should be available per web app, including themes – it's easy to imagine a situation when one chooses pinky-blue theme but decided it doesn't go well with their Netflix web app, as opposite to many, many Netflix themes already available. This could also boost theme usage, leading to more high-quality specific themes.

I think it would be quite valuable to spread beta version to as many people as possible, for example by distributing it as extension (if technically feasible) instead of limiting it to Nightly.

For Android, I find web apps useful as well if not more, but currently this feature is a little limited. I have no information whether some of the issues can be solved or are Android limitations, but for me they include inability to change icons, manage add-ons, change settings including desktop mode and opening links in Firefox instead of preview. Some of the other features that might be available in desktop would likely be useful on Android as well.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

jonalmeida — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 18:03:53 GMT

Hi @suikaz ,

I had a look at your PWA that David sent over and it looks like you're missing the 'icon' requirement for a web app manifest. You can see the list of required members here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Guides/Making_PWAs_installable#required_manifest_members

That said, we could probably do better in Fenix by trying to grab the favicon or generate one for the web app if it isn't provided. I think that's a fairly straight-forward expectation and what I see Chrome doing.

I've filed bug 1907469 to add this new case.

Thanks for the feedback here!

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 18:34:34 GMT

thanks, I *think* I've tried having icons too, but maybe some specific size is required and I missed that? but now I at least know what to look for, I'll try adding some placeholders when I have some time

thank you again

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 12:57:45 GMT

thank you again, I got it working! but now I discovered another issue that might've been expected but surely I haven't anticipated this:

when open as a PWA Fenix changes the context menu of links a lot, presenting only share and copy address, it would probably be nice to add open in a browser (and if even possible on Android open in a browser in background), that would help the custom tab issue I mentioned in another comment and would make my life easier as a bonus

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

jonalmeida — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:39:37 GMT

That sounds quite fair. Could you file a feature request here or if you're unable to, let me know and I'd be happy to file one on your behalf: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fenix&component=PWA&bug_type=enhancement

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

KellyClowers — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 22:36:48 GMT

Agree, I am not currently on Linux, but when I do go back, consistent appid/class-instance are very useful, especially for tiling/scriptable WMs

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

jonalmeida — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 06:23:53 GMT

The difficulty here is that mobile browsers are still just apps which can be killed by the user and/or OS. Long running in the background increases the chances of the app being killed by the OS more often on devices, which makes it important to not do unnecessary background work when we can avoid it. Building something that lets the app "wake up" and check what javascript wants to run is non-trivial.

WebPush + WebNotification allows the web app developer do this kind of "wake up" because they would know best when their message needs to be run.

There also isn't a good web API that lets you do what you want as a good citizen, without it being abused by other web apps, so all browsers typically try to reduce what you can do with notifications.

This isn't the most satisfying answer unfortunately, but I hope that helps give you some context on the difficulty behind it.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Bink — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 16:32:02 GMT

Hey David!

Thank you for taking the time to take a holistic approach here and sharing it with the community. I thought I'd chime in with my two cents on your post.

I really really like your web app mode idea and related round tripping; I'm just not sure how often this feature will be used. Although, there's a good chance I'm wrong here and this might mostly be because of the status quo around web apps right now and how I've been using them. As for altering the browser UI for a web app, this is a must IMHO as the focus should be on the app and not "browsing the web." For my use case, the address bar would be largely useless and I feel the idea and pushing Firefox Suggest into the web app space would be an anti-pattern and only serve branding purposes; if I want Firefox Suggest, I'm back to browsing the web and have likely already switched out of the web app.

On a related note, I've used Windows for a long time, with a sprinkling of ChromeOS, but with the direction Microsoft is taking Windows, I now primarily use Linux. When I used Windows, I didn't bother with Firefox; Edge was good enough and in many cases, with web apps being one of them, it's better. Unlike other OSs, when I started with Linux, Firefox was installed by default and, because of this, I gave it spin and mostly liked it. Because it was installed by default, and because I believe Firefox is still trying to take my needs into consideration over corporate needs first, I continue to use it even though it's still missing many quality of life features that other browsers have had for a while. Please know that the Linux community, I believe, is Firefox's largest evangelist and if it wasn't for Linux, I probably wouldn't be using Firefox today. So, please keep this is mind when you develop web apps for Windows first as you've noted here.

Lastly, if you haven't already, I'll encourage you to spend a little time with ChromeOS as it largely revolves around web apps and the implementation is pretty decent. While I realize Firefox doesn't get to control the whole OS, like Google does with ChromeOS, I find the web app experience there rather well done.

Thank you again!

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Someone — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 14:20:08 GMT

> Firefox is limited to handling push notifications only when it's running

That's a big limitation, isn't it?

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Someone — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 14:25:29 GMT

Super excited to see Firefox starting to work on PWA support! Looking forward to trying it out!

I like the overall approach you're suggesting, just one request.
Can link capture be optional? Personally, I don't like when links are opened in apps without prompting me first. Maybe something like the Firefox android "Open in app" feature that's available when there's a matching native app installed.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

HenryMortal — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 14:22:56 GMT

To create the best support for web apps on the desktop, Firefox could implement several key features and improvements:

Integrated Web App Support: Provide a seamless way to install web apps directly from websites, similar to how mobile browsers handle progressive web apps (PWAs). This could include a prominent install button or notification when visiting compatible sites.
Desktop Notifications: Ensure that web apps can utilize desktop notifications effectively. Users should be able to receive notifications from web apps even when the browser is not open, enhancing the app-like experience.
Offline Functionality: Enable web apps to work offline or in low-connectivity scenarios by supporting service workers and other technologies that allow for caching of app resources. This ensures users can continue using web apps even without a stable internet connection.
Customizable UI: Offer options for users to customize the appearance and behavior of web apps on their desktop. This could include window size preferences, taskbar/dock integration, and even custom icon settings.
Performance Optimization: Optimize browser performance when running web apps to ensure smooth and responsive user experience. This includes efficient resource management and minimizing CPU and memory usage.
Security and Privacy: Implement strong security measures to protect users' data and ensure that web apps adhere to browser security standards. This includes sandboxing web apps to prevent unauthorized access and ensuring HTTPS compliance.
Developer Tools: Provide robust developer tools specifically tailored for creating and debugging web apps. This includes tools for inspecting service workers, debugging offline functionality, and optimizing app performance.
Compatibility and Standards: Stay up-to-date with the latest web standards and ensure compatibility with popular web app frameworks and technologies. This allows developers to leverage modern web capabilities seamlessly.
User Education and Support: Offer clear documentation and support resources for users and developers interested in creating and using web apps with Firefox. This includes tutorials, forums, and responsive customer support channels.
Community Engagement: Foster a community around web app development within Firefox, encouraging feedback, collaboration, and contributions from developers and users alike.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

frelancesage — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 11:45:00 GMT

Sounds exciting, David! Especially looking forward to one-click web app mode and link capture. Would love to see a prototype and give feedback on the UI for web apps. Keep us posted on the progress!

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

HenryMortal — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 12:40:27 GMT

Firefox can enhance support for web apps on the desktop by improving Progressive Web App (PWA) capabilities, ensuring seamless offline functionality, and enabling easy installation directly from the browser. Integrating robust notification and background sync features while optimizing performance and resource usage will provide users with a smooth and native-like experience. Additionally, offering customizable app shortcuts and better integration with desktop operating systems will make web apps more accessible and appealing to users.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

ShowMeBillyJo — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 22:53:58 GMT

Thanks so much for the post and active discussion! I'm so glad and motivated to finally see some real movement on this topic.

Just wanted to echo offline and background capabilities via service workers! In my day job, I support folks in international contexts with unreliable Internet connectivity. One of our core use cases is being able to capture data offline and then sync up with the server when back online at a central office.

Offline and background operation - Progressive web apps | MDN

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Jeffg2525 — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 20:00:25 GMT

It all sounds good, but one of the most important thing you need to add is a way to print out documents and webpages. Currently I reset safari, with Google, then open the document or webpage back up and go to the rectangle with an arrow above it and print what I need to print it. Then go reset set safari back to Firefox. Another nice thing, with bookmarks, is to allow us to use smaller size icons so we can display more on the homepage. It would be nice if when we turnoff history, it stop collecting it and I still have to delete it. Also allow me to turn off sponsor Icons and the previously viewed icons. I don’t need to see either one.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Lacusch — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 15:44:11 GMT

Hi David, thanks a lot for being open with the community. Honestly I've been quite frustrated seeing this request without any status change for a long time. Especially hard was what felt like the lack of feedback on the fact that it's being worked on and that others like me have partially / fully switched from Firefox because of this missing feature.

Echoing the sentiment in this thread for me it would be really important to focus on implementing the features that apps are already depending on. For example I use the Spotify and What's app PWA personally but another important apps include all the Microsoft Pwa apps.

I agree with KellyClowers and Bink in particular that an app should be (at least optionally) be installable act like any other app and not focus on being part of Firefox. Another point to consider is that people already have expectations on what a PWA is what they want from it if they used it from other browsers like yourself so it shouldn't be a totally different experience.

I also hope that the team can be relatively quick in closing this gap so that Firefox feels less behind to the competition and have less missing features driving people like me away by not giving them the option the use the features I need.

This came of more negative than I wanted but I truly appropriate you asking for feedback.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

hellogoodbye — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 09:41:12 GMT

Thank you, David, for starting this conversation! I have no doubt that PWAs will have to come to Firefox at some point (the sooner, the better). It's now quite powerful and developers only need one codebase to deploy everywhere, this by itself ensures substantial adoption once PWAs are mature enough.

A few suggestions based on the discussion so far:

You asked how not to leave Firefox, I agree that having a button or toolbar on top (including the features you mentioned, like text searching) could be a solution. The obvious problem is taking screen real estate from a game or whatever, which would certainly annoy the user. Maybe this could be solved if hotkeys were pressed on Desktop platforms, or long-pressing the home button on smartphones? (and then opening the PWA on Firefox)
Asides from what was already mentioned (like the ability to start an app from the home screen, without first entering Firefox etc.), the main advantages of a PWA for a user are *being able to use the app offline **reliably*** and *storing content locally*. One key problem with PWAs nowadays, however, is that local storage is still a mess. AFAIK it can be deleted automatically by the browser, esp. on smartphones, or accidentally if the user "clears app data" on phone or in Desktop settings, *without knowing it'll also delete the app data*. Thus, if Firefox could find a consistent way of alerting the user to this fact, that the web app data will be deleted, and of letting developers know exactly how much storage they can get (pending user approval) *for sure*, this would be a huge improvement on the present state of affairs.

Firefox has been a trailblazer in many important features, like container tabs. I'd love to see Firefox making web apps (I'm calling them PWAs here just for clarity sake) easy, reliable and respectful of user's privacy. Following Atwood's law, it's just a matter of time till they'll be everywhere. Google is, unfortunately, ahead, I do hope Mozilla will take the lead in making them an option that can still respect the user's preferences and privacy -- something Google will never do.

PS: In regard to the worry that people would be installing apps instead of Firefox: no matter the advantages, I'll never install the Amazon app anywhere, I can't trust Amazon (even on simple things, like ensuring I'll have easy features to implement, like text search). I'll always use the web. But for a bazillion other apps, that could be as simple as a to-do or time tracker app, I'd **much** rather have them offline with local storage. Right now one mostly still develops these for each platform, but PWA lets you distribute your app to everyone

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

hellogoodbye — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 03:11:42 GMT

David, could the solution to the problem of taking screen space be, instead of interfering with the app design by adding an extra topbar, having a default message on a web app startup:

```

Hi! This app, XYZ, is a Web App, powered by Firefox.

If you want to open this app on Firefox, press {hotkey} (or on Mobile, long press the menu button)

(Possibly also: If you wish to display the Firefox topbar here, press {hotkey})

[ ] Don't show this message on startup

[ OK ] [ Learn more ]

```

I should also mention that adding the bar or opening in Firefox without the user prompting this could lead to conflicts with Firefox add-ons and confuse the non-techie user, who won't understand why his Netflix app or whatever has a Firefox bar on top (I can hear grandma asking "Is this a virus?")

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Kvin — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 08:18:46 GMT

Can you tell us if work on this has already started?
And is it possible to name it Pwa Tabs so that users don't get confused?

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

onequest — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 11:10:27 GMT

There's a lot of comments here and I didn't read all of them, so let me know if this is a duplicate. I also know that it's technically outside of the scope of this post, but I saw other comments about mobile. What I want to know is, will mobile web apps be given a similar amout of emphasis and polish? I love how many details are being explored for the desktop side, and would love to hear about a similar focus for Android since there's still a few things missing from that experience.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

knightRider0xD — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 01:49:41 GMT

Thanks David, this is great news!

Building on Oneeyedziggy's post, I've experienced a lot of issues with notifications in chrome/edge PWAs, so I think really nailing the notification implementation would be a massive boon for Firefox.
Some key areas to help make that happen:

Timely notification delivery
Often the chrome/edge apps I use receive delayed notifications, or miss them altogether compared to native or even electron apps.
Making sure apps stay loaded/don't go to sleep
Often the chrome/edge apps I use will stop responding after some time, and similarly stop delivering notifications. This behaviour is especially prevalent in windows that are open, but out-of-focus.
Full support for the Badging API
Some of the apps I use fall back from notifications to using a app/icon badge if minimised. There is currently no support for this in Linux despite a reasonably standard implementation across most DEs.

Some of the above may be down to the apps themselves, but in my opinion, despite going all-in on PWAs Chrome has really dropped the ball on some of this core functionality.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Jz68000 — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 01:58:43 GMT

Allow web apps to be installed offline as XPI files and provide the Add-ons, Plugins and ElectronJS APIs to allow web apps to run as desktop apps using Firefox as a runtime similar to Java or DotNet.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

jstormail — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 09:31:26 GMT

Great news! I’ve read through the proposal and all of the comments.

First, I’m very glad to see the proposal. I decided to distribute my app as a PWA, and only a PWA. Since Firefox does not support PWA’s, I choose not to support Firefox. Supporting PWAs would let me support Firefox too.

I much prefer using PWAs to something like Electron and Tauri. Browsers are spec-compliant with the features I need (sorry Tauri without SharedArrayBuffer) and without the risk of vendor lock in (sorry Electron and app stores). Plus, shipping a PWA is a far simpler build and deploy process in both cases.

When PWA support is added, the most important parts for me is that I can:

Detect if my app is installed as a PWA with media queries
Limit users to a single PWA app tab at a time
Automatically redirect users to the PWA when they navigate to it from the browser
Automatically transfer login credentials from the browser to the PWA
I can select the PWA display mode for minimal-ui and standalone
Installing as a PWA lets my app save data without expiration

Limiting users to a single PWA app tab at a time is important for me, since I use wasm libraries that to persist data, which do not handle multiple tabs well, if at all. It is fine for there to be multiple containers for the same PWA, but a single container should only ever allow the one tab.

I want users to think they are using an app, not Firefox. Counter to your point, it should be clearly an app, not a website. The URL bar and ability to switch back to a webpage are completely unwanted in my case. The PWA spec describes and implements many display modes, from standalone to minimal-ui, and I would like to see Firefox implement the spec. You are more than welcome to implement a new display mode that presents the URL bar and buttons to switch back to the browser (there’s an existing browser display mode that sounds similar), but please allow me to remove the browser frame and limit access to browser-specific functionality by default. Feel free to let users override it, but let me set the default experience.

I would like the PWA to run even if Firefox is not running. The Firefox app should not need to open if users open the PWA from the app selection, and quitting Firefox should not quit my PWA.

I think a good goal for the initial implementation is to make strides to support what safari supports, as they have the most limited PWA experience. After that, feel free to implement other app-like features that you see fit.

If Firefox enables PWAs, I would be glad to enable support for Firefox.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

alexdelorenzo — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 05:01:51 GMT

Just want to second the suggestions made here.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Vaidotas — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 19:01:19 GMT

Interesting, that no one mentioned Mozilla Prism yet. Back in the 2010 I had it running on computers in a small office, for employees to have an easy access to their "sales application". It was very convenient for advanced users, and for less experienced computer users to launch the application and have it available separately from web browser, which, back in the day, was crashing a bit more than nowadays.

I still would find it very useful to have a standard way to add any web application to the desktop. Especially older, "legacy" application, that was build way before PWA existed, thus not requiring manifest to be available.

Another useful outcome of supporting web applications on the desktop, would be that developers could easily "publish" their applications to desktop without using any additional tools, like Electron. I understand the appeal of Electron (single codebase for multiple platforms), but when users installs a dozen of Electron apps, with each providing its own runtime, usually several versions behind and with possible security issues, it would be more secure to share web browser runtime, which is usually the first to receive all security updates and performance improvements. Saved disk space would be a huge bonus too. Network usage (initial application downloads and updates) should be considered not only for users with limited or payed data, but also for servers, and developers paying for them. This could be spun as an eco-friendly feature.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

atjn — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 13:46:21 GMT

That sounds great! I don't think the URL bar should be visible on most apps, but I will take it if it means I can install my web apps directly in Firefox. As you already mentioned, it would be nice to have a user preference that could turn off the URL bar, so at least power users would have the option.

In the future, I think you should allow websites to customize the URL bar, and override parts of it if they want to. You can implement it as an extension to the Window Controls Overlay API, and you can have a (per-app?) user preference that disables part of, or the entire API for people who prefer that.

I understand your arguments for keeping the URL bar, but this is why I don't want it: If developers can't remove the URL bar from their apps, they will just package it with electron and distribute it as a normal app, which leaves us users with no choice. If you allow the URL bar to be removed, you make a much more compelling argument for a web app.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

BradC — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 04:23:08 GMT

I really really dislike the website Icons that automatically show up as one of the 16 on every New Tab windows I open. Anyone close by can see all the sites I have been to recently, and many of them will NOT let me delete them from the page. I will have to start using other browsers If I can't get these turned off. Very Irritating.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

kudlav — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 06:50:50 GMT

And the page must be opened. At least under Windows.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

findorf — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 05:45:20 GMT

On linux custom schemes can be configured to open with certain apps by setting the default app to open with the `x-scheme-handler/*` mime types.

See https://specifications.freedesktop.org/shared-mime-info-spec/0.22/ar01s02.html#id-1.3.18

I'm not sure if there is a way to specify that certain domains should be opened by a specific app.

Unfortunately, the application either needs to parse the mime app files itself (or use a library such as Gtk or Qt), or shell out to another program that does, like `xdg-mime` or `xdg-open`.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

findorf — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 06:12:37 GMT

> On Windows, it is straightforward to show web apps separately on the taskbar using differentiated icons

I think it is pretty straightforward on linux as well. In Wayland, I believe it just requires using a different`app_id` from the normal firefox windows. It probably makes sense to keep "firefox" as part of the app_id, but also include the name of the web app. I it is similar in X, but I don't remember the exact mechanism.

> to allow them to be pinned, to show them in the Start menu, in the ALT+TAB and window snap experience, and so on

In order for those to work in linux (at least on most desktop environments), firefox would just need to create a .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications that would look something like:

[Desktop Entry] Name=Example app Exec=firefox --webapp https://example.app Type=Application Icon=/path/to/app/icon # optional, if the webapp handles a custom scheme MimeType=x-scheme-handler/exampleapp

Also, I'd like to be able to start these web apps from the command line, by passing some option to firefox (like the `firefox --webapp https://example.app` in the above desktop file. Even if the initial support for adding shortcuts is windows only, I'd like it if I could manually start firefox with a web app experience from the command line.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

drizztdourden_ — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 14:33:57 GMT

Hi,

I can't really read everything on here but one point in your main thread that hit me is that the UI should partly remain. Why?

The great thing (At least on MacOs), is that the only thing you have is the main buttons to close, minimize and expand, the title, and a "..." which hide everything else on the right side (probably on the left on windows instead).

This way, the "app" looks exactly like the original built in app in most cases.

I use it for teams and outlook and they look like their exact counterpart with Chrome. They're already electron app for the desktop version and thus, behave exactly the same as well in a browser, and pwa can replicate this easily.

And they appears as standard app with icon in the MacOS bar:

My own gripe with this and the "wants" of Firefox having this is simple. It is my main browser and I like to use for everything. However, not having PWA means I use chrome for this... But every single link that is opened in these app is opened in Chrome instead of Firefox and there is no way to set this otherwise.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 23:47:12 GMT

Hello! There's a lot to parse here... want to make sure I got it right

There should be an option to change the icon

I'm hesitant about this... seems like a vector for fooling people into thinking one site is another. My instinct is to honor the icon provided by the website. A website can provide such a choice though.

Provide an option to set an app to run when the OS starts up

Yes, this seems righteous. I added it to our backlog of ideas.

Provide an option to disable extensions for a given web app

Probably this should be fine grained control to turn an extension off on a per web app basis, and probably coupled with web app specific toolbar button pinning. Added a tracking ticket for this.

Make sure the PWA window looks distinct (and looks good)

Thanks for the concepts. I'll have our designers look at these. Regardless, yes it's very important that the window is visually recognizable as being a web app window. I will say though, because this will only catch on if all kinds of users use it (think, my mother... rather than people like us who spend time on the forums of a software product) it will also need to feel like a Firefox window, a web browser window. It will be tough balance, and the purists among us will be dissatisfied at first. Remember though, the broader the adoption the more we'll get to build in niche customizations later.

The window shouldn't have an address bar

Your vote on this is noted. I know it won't be popular here necessarily, but I think it's part of the broad adoption I mentioned above.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 01:20:52 GMT

Containers

OK... got it. So what I'm going to write down is the ability to assign a web app to its own container or a container of choice. That way you could install two GMail apps for different addresses, or a GMail and a Youtube that use different credentials. The reason I don't want container isolation by default is the inverse case... if I have one Google login and I use it on many sites, some of which are web apps and some of which are not, I want the login state to be shared.

Add-ons

OK, I am tracking the per-addon per-web-app configuration in our roadmap now.

Open in default browser

Well yeah... I have the exact same story as you! I used to work on Edge, and now I work on Firefox. When I first came to Firefox, since it didn't support web apps, I continued to use Edge for the web apps, but wrote an extension to launch external links to Firefox. Obviously I have some bias toward not implementing a Firefox feature to launch another browser, but I understand the user choice behind the idea and I will track it for consideration.

Icon customization

Low quality icons... I get that. I will track it for consideration.

Settings UI per web app

Absolutely. Don't even need to track it.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 01:29:09 GMT

FWIW... a "privileged extension" is one where you get to write your own API that can call Firefox internal code. The how-to is here: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/extensions/webextensions/basics.html. I wrote a prototype of some of the features I described above using this mechanism. But the prototype can only run in Nightly unless it's signed by Mozilla, so this is only good for writing cool extensions for yourself and your Nightly-using friends.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 01:31:34 GMT

It can be... but it's not different from Chrome and Edge, AFAIK

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 01:32:39 GMT

No, that's not the case for Firefox on Windows. Unless it's broken. Can you give it a fresh look and if it doesn't work for you let me know and I'll be happy to help.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 01:37:29 GMT

I am a fan of options, and so I'm tracking the idea of hiding the address bar (which is admittedly what Chrome, Edge, etc. do) as an option. But I do think that the way to win broad adoption of this feature is to present it to grandma as "this is still a website and you're still in Firefox, it's just that this website is right there in your taskbar / dock"

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 01:41:05 GMT

I think we're on the same page! #1 is "single site browsing" and #2 is "link capture"... both very much in the concept I described above. #3 extensions are in, and #4 will be the default (though multi-tab web apps do make sense for some sites).

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 01:50:52 GMT

No plans to do anything to break PWAsForFirefox!

It does sound like you aren't a fan of the model I proposed above. I understand and expect that. In generally I'm approaching this from the angle of "how do I make browsing the web with Firefox better"... with the idea that being able to set up a website as a separate entry on your taskbar/dock and contain to just one site is something that helps users stay organized and get to their sites easier.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

kjintar — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 22:16:08 GMT

Regarding the icon:

I've already arrived at the point at which I wanted to change the icon of a PWA. However, I'm convinced that this should be handled either by user configuration on the OS level or by providing such configuration within the app. I share the concerns you mention.

There's already a trend for in-app customization options for app icons on mobile. I believe that such customization options are fair monetization options for app developers. Providing such options at the browser level would be nice for end users—no doubt—but would also decrease the value of these in-app options.

There are also options on several systems to customize app icons at the OS level already. The latest iOS update introduced tints and other low-impact customizations. On Windows, you can change an app's icon in the taskbar and on the Start menu by creating your own link and setting an individual icon. (This option is currently flaky for PWAs since some implementations update/recreate the links, causing the manually set icon to reset.)

There is a demand for app icon customization, but I personally do not believe that browsers are the expected level to solve the issue. However, you should provide a seamless mechanism to allow apps to update their icon on request and may implement future standards defined by OS providers.

Regarding Extensions and Profile Settings:

I'm having my thoughts about browser specific settings in the PWA context as a whole. I dislike having entirely sperated profiles per PWA, but I also dislike having the same profile linked to all PWAs at the same time. Even setting a profile per app is (even though it should be possible for power users) probably too complex for everyday users.

Which leads me to a concept of some kind of override mechanic for PWAs for all profile related settings except Firefox Sync. That would include a new UI component for frequently modified settings and an extended UI to edit further settings. I might aim a bit high here, but that's what I would like to see.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

findorf — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 08:50:48 GMT

I'm not in the "grandma" demographic, so my perspective may be off, but it seems like having an address bar, especially a writable address bar would actually be more confusing.

It seems to me like typing an address or search term, and having it open in a different window would be pretty surprising behavior. And I suspect there will be some interesting edge cases with that as well, for example what if the user has multiple regular browser windows open, which one will it open the new tab in? What if the user doesn't have a regular browser window open already? I assume it would open a new tab rather than replace a random existing tab?

And then if using a url in the same site, it doesn't open in a different window. So sometimes it opens in the same window and sometimes it doesn't. And I imagine that inconsistency would be confusing if you don't understand why.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

nachtfalter — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 14:07:04 GMT

Hello,

First of all, I want to say that Firefox is my favorite browser. I just want to make sure I understood the new web app "mode" correctly. It seems like it will function similarly to the current popup "mode", but with more options, like a "quit web app mode" button and access to all extension buttons. From what I gather, the current popup mode is more compact and minimalistic than the upcoming web app mode will be.

However, I believe that one of the key ideas behind PWAs is to minimize distractions and reduce unnecessary interface elements. In Chrome, for example, developers can choose between different modes for PWAs: "fullscreen" (for games or video apps), "standalone" (which makes the app look like a regular desktop app), and "minimal-ui" (which shows only essential browser controls). Although I’ve only seen web apps in "standalone" mode, I think it’s important to offer a very minimalistic UI, ideally with just a three-dot menu in the title bar for options.

Additionally, since you’ll likely need some form of installation to manage link handlers, I’d suggest going all the way with it—offering a full installation experience. This would include the ability to pin the app to the taskbar and find it in the OS app menu, without showing the Firefox logo on the app icon.

If this feature isn’t implemented soon or doesn’t meet user expectations, I and other users may switch browsers permanently (I’m already using Chrome for PWAs and WebSerial). So, I urge you to create a clean, streamlined web app mode—no URL bar, no extra buttons to open Firefox (if I want to open the browser, I’ll use the pinned icon on my taskbar), and full integration with the taskbar.

Thank you, and I hope to see this update soon!

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

00FF00 — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 11:35:12 GMT

i think i replied elsewhere in this thread, and im pretty sure i mentioned part of this elsewhere too, but honestly the main reason i like firefox is the customization of both the UI and the webpage layout (font, colors).

that being said, i do think the ability to pin to the taskbar or create desktop shortcuts would be a nice addition, but as far as how the PWA's actually look, so, if you enable the vertical tabs experiment and then click to customize the toolbar... it hides the vertical tabs. which means you cant easily switch your tab, but it does give a nice look at what a PWA should look like (imo). ill include the screenshot at the end of this i suppose since i dont know how to navigate the formatting here yet lol

so i basically already use PWA's, just without the shortcuts. firefox reopens all of my windows when i open it for the day, and basically i have spotify in its own window and that actually looks not much different from what a PWA should look like even with the vertical tabs.

I guess i dont even have much of a suggestion here, just showing that what is possible already with the vertical tabs looks GREAT - especially if you set a theme with firefox color, and enable the titlebars to set their color based on the desktop wallpaper - so anyway i guess the TLDR is this is more just a thumbs up than anything lol

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

jfred — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 14:05:31 GMT

Chrome has a setting to continue running background tasks even when all its windows are closed for cases like this.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

HardBall — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 10:22:05 GMT

drizztdourdon expressed my thoughts exactly. Web apps let me have a similar desktop app experience regardless of whether I'm using my Windows work or personal devices, or Linux devices. The lack of Web App support in Firefox is the single reason I stopped using Firefox and switched to Chrome several years ago for any browser related task.

Web app support may seem like a niche feature to some but it now drives my browser choice. It's that important to me.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Varpie — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 00:50:11 GMT

I don't think the answer should always be "it's clearly a website", there are plenty of scenarios where we would want to create an app in "fullscreen"... which is why a PWA's manifest has a "display" member.

I think it should be up to the developer to decide how much their web app should look like a website, and the 4 options provided by the "display" manifest member make sense so it would be great to have them all available and respect the manifest.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

suikaz — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 07:39:02 GMT

or default to the manifest value but allow users to override that

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

KellyClowers — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:01:48 GMT

You are describing something completely different from PWAs at that point. Regardless of the merits, that doesn't belong on a discussion of PWAs

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

ke7in — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 09:37:50 GMT

Please! I need to be able to pin my main web apps to my Windows taskbar (gmail, youtube, etc)

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

corner3 — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 14:02:13 GMT

To switch to Firefox for PWAs, along with some the aforementioned features, I would want...

Access to extensions. A single icon in whatever simplified UI bar there would be, or some easy access method, but most importantly access to them. Ad blocking and information would be important here.
That they use the same profile as the full browser, or at least have it as an option. I don't want to recreate all my security settings for them, or even worse, each one.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

ildella — Sun, 29 Dec 2024 21:42:29 GMT

Did it all stopped last July? 😞

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

FirefoxNetizen — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 14:20:02 GMT

Thanks for sharing these ideas! First of all, I just wanted to say that web app support with any design is better than no support, so I am excited regardless of the exact manifestation. These are my responses to your points though.

Integrating with the operating system: I like this as-is.

Browsing within and between sites: I like this as-is.

Moving into and out of a web app “mode”: I like this as-is.

Offering a different browser UI for a web app: I am not sure how use of "Firefox Suggest" could be useful, but IMO there is no harm in making the address bar given that it empowers users who know correct urls for subpages and that the other suggested features are enough to make it visually distinct from non-web apps.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Bohemax — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 06:37:18 GMT

Thank you for all your ideas. As an end user, i really just would like to see my favourite browser has features like all the other browser has. If you guys, as a team, give us exact the same experiment of web apps given by chromium based browsers, i think, it ll be enough for starting. You can then add new features.We have a saying, starting is half the job.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

ReX83 — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 22:18:42 GMT

@david-rubino wrote:
it’s not a goal to make it feel like you’re not in Firefox.
In fact, contrary to the notion that web apps should be “installed” like regular apps, a core idea of this concept is that running a web app should be thought of as moving a tab to your taskbar or dock... a one-step operation that can be undone just as easily.
[...]
Moving into and out of a web app “mode”
As stated above, you should be able to take any tab and move it into web app mode in one step. When you take this action, the tab would be moved into a new web app window, maintaining the state of the web page entirely. You could even be watching a video, and it won’t miss a frame.
[...]
A new toolbar section would show the icon of the website prominently, clearly indicating you’re in web app mode for a given site.

I'm not fully convinced by the points above. My 2 cents:

Screen space is valuable - no unnecessary toolbars.
A web app should feel like a native desktop application, not a website running in a browser. A title bar is enough; anything more is unnecessary clutter. Chrome and Edge get this right by keeping web apps minimal - just the title bar (with the 3 dots menu icon), with no extra branding or toolbars.
A web app should feel like an independent application, not a browser tab.
I don’t need a reminder that I’m using Firefox. When you install Gmail via Chrome, for example, there's no Chrome branding - just the app itself, with an install/uninstall flow similar to any desktop application.
Installing and uninstalling web apps shouldn't be as fluid as moving a tab.
A webapp isn’t just a temporary tab: it’s meant to be installed and used long-term. In reality, once I install a webapp, I rarely think about removing it. Uninstalling via the Chrome three-dot menu (which is nicely hidden in the titlebar) is already simple enough, and making the process as frictionless as moving a tab feels unnecessary.
Seamless transitions when moving a web app are a nice to have, not a necessity.
While smooth transitions are always appreciated, the effort spent optimizing an action that happens once (installation) rather than thousands of times (daily usage) seems misdirected. Even if a webapp had to close and reopen when being moved, I wouldn’t see that as a dealbreaker.

The success of Chrome and Edge’s PWAs comes from their ability to make web apps feel like true desktop applications. Firefox should focus on delivering that same experience: minimal UI, no browser branding, and a clear distinction between web apps and regular tabs.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Bink — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 22:30:57 GMT

Any update as to the progress here? It's been 8 months. Thanks.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

FirefoxNetizen — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 23:48:38 GMT

I would also like an update.

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

david-rubino — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 07:59:58 GMT

Hello everyone... I spent some time just now reading through the recent activity on this thread, and before I get to more detailed replies to individual posts, I'll say two things:

I apologize for letting this conversation languish as I have. I will do better at staying connected to Connect going forward. Call it a new year resolution.
A first version of this feature is almost ready for preview in Nightly. I've been on parental leave since December, but I've seen some demos of the progress while I've been out, and it really is close. A couple of weeks perhaps?

I'll share more when I have more... and in the meantime re-engage with the comments on this thread.

Thanks! -David

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

ScottJenson — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 10:32:20 GMT

STRONGLY agree with this post. Literally *on one* is asking for 'seamless movement" between tabs and a web app window. That is something only a programmer could event and obsess over, wasting untold amount of resources. When I save the web manifest the flow is well established: 1) make a icon in my file system 2) when I open it, it's full screen 3) there is no step 3. Are there any PMs in this organization that are helping the team keep focus?

Re: How can Firefox create the best support for web apps on the desktop?

Kenneth_Jensen — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 20:52:29 GMT

Wellcome back from leave @david-rubino and thank you for looking at PWA in Firefox.

As a user I'm confused...Why is this thread started here and not just part of this?:
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/bring-back-pwa-progressive-web-apps/idi-p/35/emcs_t/S2h8ZW1haWx8dG9waWNfc3Vic2NyaXB0aW9ufE02UUtKQzI1Vk9EUDgzfDg1MzU5fFNVQlNDUklQVElPTlN8aEs/page/30#comments
Have I been looking in the wrong thread/place or how does it work here? 🙂

Anyway, this is awesome...I'm so happy to hear this and can't wait to test it in Nightly.