Maybe a controversial opinion, but Lemmy is pretty great as a PWA

Prof. Sweetlove@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 217 points –

So Jerboa broke on my phone just now and I didn't want to stop browsing Lemmy. Unfortunately no suitable alternative was found so I just decided to check if I could open it in my browser and install it.

To my surprise, it worked. And it works really well quite frankly. Sure, the UI is different, but I'm not at all missing any features.

Did any of you guys try it as well? What's your opinion?

If not, did you even know that was a possibility? It quite frankly never crossed my mind, because Reddit and other platforms always force you to use an app when you open them in a browser.

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Oof, same on Android. That's a complete deal breaker for using the PWA.

Why dont you use the back button on Android?

Well, for starters there is no back button in the PWA on Android. Swiping from the right to go back completely refreshes the feed.

the back button works fine when I use Firefox and install a PWA with it.

Yea I can hold down on the button and get the normal history menu from Firefox. They may be using gesture navigation tho and idk how that is affected.

I use gesture navigation and the back button works without reloading.

I think android has both gestures with a back button and without (using a gesture for back) which I think is giving people issues, tho I've never used it myself bc I cannot stand it, IMO it's change for the sake of change.

Strange that's happening for you. It's definitely not an all android thing. Must be something about your specific model or your settings. The only time my button bar disappears is with games and even then it's still accessible by swiping up from the bottom.

This is interesting, I checked all the apps (that are running/enabled) on the two android devices in my household. Mine is set up with the traditional android UI triangle, circle, square, visible whereas my partner's has the "slide up" feature enabled where the back, home, and "background" buttons need you to slide your finger up or they aren't visible. Both seem to remain present and usable in apps, although the back button does cause "too much of a back avtion" in the third party camera app she uses, taking you home vs. back a step. These devices are both unlocked (but not rooted currently) devices activated on at&t firstnet. My coworker has a Verizon issued (came from the carrier) Samsung Galaxy and the triangle, circle, and square buttons are missing in a few apps, and totally inaccessible. I am not a fan of how much bloat cell carriers add to their android devices, so much so that I would say the coworker's phone is running a "Verizon Samsung version" of Android. I did a quick search and didn't find a full list anywhere of variations of Android by carrier or model phone, but I did find a number of users with similar observations about the extreme variation.

This is not an issue for me. I swipe back and it returns to where I left.

Count yourself lucky because as you might imagine the bug makes it unusable. It even happens on regular mobile browsing.