When is the best time to suggest adding a PWA to the home screen? Instead of asking immediately on the first visit, consider moments when users have already experienced value: after reading an article, completing a web tool task, returning to the site, or finishing a booking.
What is the difference between display: standalone and fullscreen in a PWA Web App Manifest? Based on real iPhone and Android testing, this guide compares browser UI, app-like presentation, screen space, platform behavior, and when each display mode makes sense.
Learn how to measure PWA launches from the home screen separately from normal website traffic. This guide explains why UTM parameters alone cannot reliably identify standalone launches and shows how to use display-mode: standalone with GA4 custom events or your own analytics endpoint.
Learn how to change a PWA's interface only when it is running from the home screen. Using display-mode: standalone and navigator.standalone, you can show special messages, menus, offers, or coupons for standalone users while keeping the normal browser experience unchanged.
Learn how to detect whether a PWA is running in a normal browser or in standalone mode using JavaScript. This guide covers matchMedia('(display-mode: standalone)'), the iOS navigator.standalone fallback, practical code examples, and important limitations of home screen launch detection.
What happens when you remove a website or PWA from your iPhone or Android home screen? Learn what happens to your account, login session, cookies, localStorage, Service Worker caches, and other web data—and why deleting a home screen icon is not the same as deleting your account.
When you add a website to your iPhone or Android home screen, does it become an app or is it just a bookmark? This guide explains the difference between ordinary home screen website shortcuts and PWAs, including manifests, icons, launch URLs, standalone display, offline support, and more.
Google Search has a feature called Preferred Sources. It allows users to choose websites they trust or enjoy reading, making content from those sources more likely to appear prominently in their Google Search experience. In August 2026, Google also published a way for website owners to add an interactive Preferred Sources button directly to their own sites. I added it to OJapp Tips as well. Interestingly, the standard button did not display correctly on my WordPress site, so I eventually switched to Google’s official custom button implementation. What are Google Preferred Sources? Preferred Sources lets users tell Google, “I want to see more content from this source.” When a website is selected as a Preferred Source, Google can give content from that source more prominence for that particular user. This is different from a traditional SEO technique designed to improve rankings for everyone. A better way to think about it is as a mechanism for making it easier to reconnect with readers who already know and trust your site. Google added a button websites can use in August 2026 According […]
PWAs can be designed in two ways: 1S1A, which treats an entire site as one app, and 1P1A, which turns individual pages into separate apps. This article explains the differences in Web App Manifest design, Manifest management for 1P1A, and how dynamic generation simplifies the implementation.
When you look up the benefits of PWAs, you often see explanations like these: They can work offline They can send push notifications They can be used like apps They can load faster Of course, all of these are things PWAs can do. But in 2026, when I think about the benefits of PWAs from the user’s perspective, I believe the biggest value is much simpler. You can place frequently used websites or pages you want to revisit on your smartphone’s home screen and open them with a single tap next time. There is no need to search again, dig through bookmarks, or navigate through URLs. Just tap the icon on your home screen, and you can immediately return to the website you use. What matters to users is not that “this website uses PWA technology,” but that it becomes a little more convenient the next time they use it. And today, if that is the only experience you want to create, you do not need to build a complicated PWA. The Biggest Benefit of PWA Is Being on the […]
OJapp Tips is a technical blog documenting real-world PWA behavior, iPhone Safari quirks, home screen installation, manifest.json, Service Worker, Web App Manifest, WebClip, icon cache issues, and practical web development tips based on actual testing with iPhone, Android, and PC.
The articles are based on hands-on experiments from PWA LAB and real development experience with OJapp, Petal, and OJ-Pass. Instead of only repeating official documentation, OJapp Tips focuses on the details developers actually get stuck on.
