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

[david-rubino]

(See my quick update posted February 4, 2025: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-t..., and then another update posted March 17, 2025: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/how-can-firefox-create-the-best-support-for-web-apps-on-t...)

---

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:

1. Web apps should appear with their own icons alongside traditional apps, both in places where you launch apps and where running apps are shown. 
2. Web apps should remain open until you close them. You should not be able to “navigate away” from them like a web page.
3. 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:

1. Moving into and out of a web app “mode”
2. Offering a different browser UI for a web app
3. Browsing within and between sites
4. 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

[onequest]

Hey Jon, thanks for this. Can you or anyone else at Firefox clarify more specifics of what's in development? Or if this is already posted somewhere, where is it?

For example, the post by David Rubino talks about a lot of features but most of it seems focused around Windows and MacOS. But PWA for Android still needs considerable work and many,if not all, of the same improvements mentioned by David.

Things like: 

1. Web apps should appear with their own icons alongside traditional apps, both in places where you launch apps and where running apps are shown. 
2. Web apps should remain open until you close them. You should not be able to “navigate away” from them like a web page.
3. 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 my main question is if these same features are coming to Android or if what's in development is only for traditional computers? But however you want to answer specifics works great for me!

[jonalmeida]

Hi, I'm a different Jon (that works on Android), but I can reply back to some of yours points 🙂

1. Web apps should appear with their own icons alongside traditional apps, both in places where you launch apps and where running apps are shown. 

The last time we investigated this, it was difficult to do for non-technical reasons that require support to install web apps like they are regular apps. The requirements were non-trivial at the time, but it's always worth re-investigating over time.

• Web apps should remain open until you close them. You should not be able to “navigate away” from them like a web page.

I'm not sure I follow - could you say more on how you expect this to work?

• 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. 
  
  

This would be a nice-to-have and may require the app to be installed as a regular web app. I'm unsure about some UX flows (e.g. starting outside of the web app or redirects that try to take you to the standalone app), but there are things we could possibly do today to make the experience better without that though.

So my main question is if these same features are coming to Android or if what's in development is only for traditional computers? But however you want to answer specifics works great for me!

I'll leave this for @david-rubino to answer who probably has more context.

Thanks for showing excitement for web apps on Android, please keep sharing more. 🙂

[onequest]

Awesome, thanks so much for chiming in Jon! Super cool you work on the Android side.

1. That makes sense. My understanding here is incomplete, but what I've researched seems to be that there's something called a TWA (trusted web activity). It's one way to package PWA's in a way that makes them feel much more native (i.e. the things mentioned previously like their own icon without the little browser icon in the right corner and the launcher thing). Is this how you understand it and part of the difficult technical needs? Would definitely love to look into this more. I can create a separate discussion here on Connect that's specific for Android or mobile if these features aren't going to be included with this one.

2. Haha, honestly not super sure what this one is talking about, I took it directly from the list from David. But, potentially in a similar realm, something that can be annoying is that because the PWA's on Android Firefox aren't fully integrated yet, they do have bars that sometimes appear when navigating through links. See attached image below for reference.

 3. Makes sense as well! This one is lower on my list, but it definitely would be nice to have. Also I'm a UX Designer so if you can be specific about the UX flows you're thinking about I could probably make some.

Overall I'm just hoping that the PWA experience on Android Firefox can keep leveling up because it's my primary computer. And with the new Android desktop mode being made I'm starting to use it even more and haven't been using other computers for months. Hopefully David can share more soon. 🤞

[jonalmeida]

Is this how you understand it and part of the difficult technical needs?

Partially, yeah. TWAs are one way for developers to ship their apps in the way you describe. Another is by the browser generating a WebAPK that can be installed.

..they do have bars that sometimes appear when navigating through links. See attached image below for reference.

Right! That was an intentional design decision we made because a user can leave the installed PWAs site (provided by the web app manifest), and to avoid phishing attacks, we show the toolbar so the URL of the non-PWA url you are on is visible.

Also I'm a UX Designer so if you can be specific about the UX flows you're thinking about I could probably make some.

Those two examples in my comment above are the top ones that come to mind. They can manifest in different ways: when you click a link from a third party app or from another website, cookie storage separation, etc.

[Cris]

Hey, really excited to see firefox is picking back up support this feature I really miss! just wanted to contribute my thoughts to the discussion 🙂

Like many others, I think the benefit of being able to move sites back and forth between being a pwa and a tab, and showing a URL bar with an interface that intentionally creates a browser like experience are divorced from why users value pwa's.

A pwa has benefit to the user for its ability to be different from the traditional browsing experience. Replicating a traditional browser experience because you want don't want users to forget its a webpage seems somewhat out of touch with why users would want pwa functionality- I already have a traditional browsing experience, but it falls short in some select usecases where a user experience more akin to a native application would be much more helpful, in spite of the platform or service not having a native application.

That's intrinsically what makes pwa's so helpful to users who desire them. I understand the desire for unambiguity in design, but compromising on the reason PWAs are useful in order to provide features that folks can already use in a traditional browsing experience (moving tabs around. And I don't think getting back to a particular window that's already open is a terribly large pain point on most desktops), or to disambiguate that the website they "installed" is a website under the hood, is design that doesn't actually meet the users needs.

Unambiguity is a worthwhile consideration (though the fact that the user experience in question *has* to be initiated by intentional user action does mitigate its priority), and being able to move tabs between my browser window and a "PWA state" sounds like a nifty behaviour, those things aren't worth prioritizing over the ultimate usecase that users want PWAs for in the first place- being able to configure a "native-like" experience for certain websites when that better suits their needs, with integration with the native app launching workflow for their given OS, a different app icon, and a minimal UI that allows the user to focus on the website's interface rather than framing it in another seperate ui used for browsing and navigating the broader web.

PWA's are useful for the ways they AREN'T like a browser tab.

Thanks for your time, really appreciate all the work you guys are doing!

[ShowMeBillyJo]

This articulates everything wrong with Mozilla's current design direction. In agile terms, it feels like Mozilla are skipping straight to designing the race car they think we want, when the existing PWA paradigm is the skateboard moped we're all asking for.

Grandma doesn't use Firefox anymore. We, the folks who do, don't need or want a differentiator. Mozilla doesn't need to fix what isn't broken. We just need something that works.

[bijm]

Well said, and I would like to echo this sentiment.

[SanguinePar]

"I already have a traditional browsing experience, but it falls short in some select usecases where a user experience more akin to a native application would be much more helpful"

This is absolutely spot on - I want a PWA so I can FEEL like I'm using an app, even though it's secretly just a browser with a false moustache on.

[bobster]

Agreed and I'm excited that this is still being worked on.. Hoping it comes out soon!

[MattBCool]

Agree! Very well put.

[vinnom]

Some awesome ideas for a first approach. One thing I would like to highlight though is that a Firefox web app icon on linux distros would be easy to implement (basically a .desktop file with a few parameters), so please consider it to be OOB too, not a Windows-only feature.

[Zarathin]

Based on this discussion I'm really liking the direction that PWA support in Firefox seems to be going, I look forward to trying it!

One stumbling block I wanted to bring up is a limitation in Floorp's implementation of PWA's which significantly hampers my particular use case and probably many others - hence why I want to bring it up here to help avoid Firefox doing the same thing.

When creating a PWA in Floorp, the distinguishing information it stores to create start menu/desktop shortcuts reference only the primary domain of the URL, ignoring any subdomains. For example, if I wanted to have two PWAs of Wikipedia installed, with one pointed to English Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) and the other pointed to Spanish Wikipedia (es.wikipedia.org), whichever PWA I create first will have its shortcuts overwritten by the PWA I create second, since it's only looking at the "wikipedia.org" portion of the URL.

I would love to be able to have separate PWAs installed for different subdomains of the same primary domain, either automatically or with an easily accessible override.

[nachtfalter]

I also would like to have the abillity to install more than one PWA from one domain, at e.g. based on the manifests scope. Currently with Chrome it's not possible to have more than one per domain, so I have to install the second one with Edge... So please don't build this limiation in.

I can't wait to see PWAs in Firefox! And thanks to the Firefox-Team for this amazing browser.

[RealLyfeSux]

I noticed that Firefox Nightly has a (kind of) working version of this now, but it doesn't do anything other than remove the tabs from the browser lol

I know this is a very early implementation, but I'd love to see how this evolves, though!

[mrzoops]

Where are you seeing PWAs being implemented already?

[RealLyfeSux]

I went to about:config and enabled browser.taskbarTabs.enabled, as of Firefox Nightly 139, there is an Add to Taskbar option on the right-end of the URL bar.

It doesn't add anything to the taskbar, but it does change the browser UI by removing tabs... Not much, but it's a start!

[2mustange]

Yeah I don't like how it's still completely a browser. If I select want a web app for say Reddit, as an example, I have no need for other browser related features. I really hope their implementation of pwa is a clean experience

[RealLyfeSux]

I believe Mozilla did say there might be a choice for a PWA interface.

[SanguinePar]

Agreed, key aspects of that (for me) would be:

• The PWA is present on the taskbar as its own entity, not as one of a number of browser windows.
  • This would mean that if I wanted to drag it along the taskbar, say from the left to the right, it would move independently of open browser windows, rather than all of them moving as well
• It uses the favicon of the site as the taskbar icon, not the FF icon.
• Any shortcut I made to it would also use the site favicon, not the FF icon.

Hopefully these are still features that will come as it develops. Great to see progress on it though, via this config flag.

[mrzoops]

This is exactly what I am looking for with a PWA.