PWAs are coming to iOS 11.3: Cupertino, we have a problem

Recently it was announced that iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 will include Service Workers, opening up the way for PWAs on iOS (and potentially macOS too, following lead of Microsoft here).

☝️ If you don’t want to download the macOS 10.13.4 beta you can alternatively download Safari Technology Preview (> 48) for use with your current macOS install.

Great news indeed, yet as Maximiliano Firtman documented there are quite a few caveats right now. Some might get fixed, yet some others won’t. One of the bigger issues I find worrying is the fact that you can end up with different versions of one and the same PWA, depending on the context you are running it in:

On Safari, on each app’s Web view, and home screen web apps, the engine doesn’t share Service Workers nor the Cache Storage, which means the user might end with several copies of all the files for the PWA on the same device.

PWAs are coming to iOS 11.3: Cupertino, we have a problem →

On a sidenote: Twitter recently announced they’ll no longer be shipping the Twitter app to macOS …

Published by Bramus!

Bramus is a frontend web developer from Belgium, working as a Chrome Developer Relations Engineer at Google. From the moment he discovered view-source at the age of 14 (way back in 1997), he fell in love with the web and has been tinkering with it ever since (more …)

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