PWA for iOS...

It's been already a while since Apple ended the era of ignoring the technology that has the potential to become the future of mobile web experience. But the path of progressive web apps in the iOS environment isn't that smooth so far.

Having a status of the cross-platform technology it's self-explanatory that basic pros including offline performance that ensures its popularity within business scopes are present. And, yes, PWA on iOS still can be easily installed and reached through Home Screen icon.

But new platform peculiarities noticeably affects the full list of progressive web apps features on some aspects making them more limited but on the other hand more comprehensive.

Apple PWA app: what are the specifics?

Progressive web apps on iOS can interact with geolocation data and access camera and some of the device sensors. It can also ensure headset-only speech synthesis and audio output. Apple also gradually adding some specific features like Web RTC or WebAssembly in the testing mode.

Let’s explore the core differences between Apple PWA 2019 and the Google version of the app to define things to consider before selecting the technology as the way-to-go for your iOS project.

Starting point. 12.2 OS version brought the possibility to restore the app state which is essential for Android PWA but it came along with disabling from-scratch-restart action.

Cache size. So far it’s limited to 50 MB on iOS devices for offline mode restricting the amount of required content for a web app.

Background sync. Such a web app on iOS platform can’t execute code as well as synchronize data while running on the background.

Find out more specifics and my opinion on the future of progressive web apps for iOS in my Medium article.