this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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Develop PWAs instead. They are platform independent and also work as normal websites.
It sucks that that's the best option, but if we've made it to that point I personally would rather just use the website without extra steps. Not a fan of PWAs.
Most information based apps don't need to be natively integrated. Take the Voyager client for example. It behaves almost exactly like the native version of the app.
Most users wouldn't even notice a difference, if well implemented.
App developers need to abandon these proprietary platforms and switch to open ones like the web. That's the only way to end this fuckery.
The "value add" for mobile apps is mainly that they enable more analytics collection without the users having the ability to control it through ad blockers. There are vanishingly few cases where the UX is superior compared to a well-implemented web app.
Voyager is a fantastic example. I forget that it is a PWA all the time.
Voyager is a web site??????
Basically, yeah.
If you think about it, a PWA is an electron app without the electron wrapper.
Many APIs Android apps can use are unavailable to PWAs. Also PWAs typically require server infrastructure to at least load once. The author of my favourite open source unit conversion calculator shouldn't need to maintain a web server so I can use their app.
But yeah, for use cases that require a server anyways and don't need elaborate mobile APIs, PWAs are probably the way to go.
How will they capture your data silly?
I don't have any hope that Google analytics is dying any time soon
in a browser that's easily blocked
But not everyone cares, unfortunately. The masses will always be exposed to this shit.
I think that was not the point. but that contrary to native apps, it is easy to block that in a webapp, if you care.
True