It is said that IOS 11.4 will support the PWA, but it doesn't.
Question: Today IOS 12 released, does Apple support PWA in the 12th version of IOS? (Like add to home screen)
3 Answers
PWAs are a complex collection of features and functionalities. Apple added an initial support for some PWA characteristics in iOS 11.3 in march 2018. You can read a really good explanation here, with their significant limitations:
Progressive Web Apps on iOS are here https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430dee3a7
Unfortunately iOS 12.0 doesn't seem to have improved the support in any significant way.
SEP2019 UPDATE: iOS 13.0 is here, and with it many bug fixes regarding PWAs, new installation UI and other stuff. But still no push notifications: https://medium.com/@firt/iphone-11-ipados-and-ios-13-for-pwas-and-web-development-5d5d9071cc49
MAR2019 UPDATE: This is the definitive state of PWA support in iOS 12.2 stable. It's improving but it's still a long journey: https://medium.com/@firt/whats-new-on-ios-12-2-for-progressive-web-apps-75c348f8e945
JAN2019 UPDATE: It seems like Apple is moving forward! Beta1 of iOS 12.2 has improved the PWA support. Still no push notifications though: https://medium.com/@firt/pwas-on-ios-12-2-beta-the-good-the-bad-and-the-not-sure-yet-if-good-a37b6fa6afbf https://medium.com/dev-channel/progressive-web-app-progress-in-ios-12-2-beta-1-build-16e5181f-a18cd05ca361
Apple has supported an Add to Homescreen experience since the first iPhone was released. It does not automatically prompt the user like Chrome on Android and desktop does. You will need to handle the prompt yourself. But Chrome is drifting that way too.
Manifest is noticed as "in development" so I think a new version could add the automatic prompt add to home screen. I hope.
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