What is the difference between a regular app and a web app? Does iOS have WebApps or is just an Android thing?

void@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 36 points –

I've been using wefwef WebApps to browse the fediverse and am curious to understand how it works. I do not have knowledge deep knowledge about coding or programming.

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I would also like to add that there are PWAs (Progressive Web Apps).

PWAs can be installed on most devices and share even more similarities with native apps (Native app = usually installed through app store). For example installed PWAs can be viewed in Fullscreen or work offline, even though they are still technically a webpage.

So the advantage here is that you don't need to use an App Store to have an app installed on your phone.

And the main disadvantage is that the PWA can't access most of the device's APIs, that you could access through a native app. This means worse performance usually, no support for theming beyond dark/light (like Material You), no good access to on-device databases etc. This is also the reason why most apps aren't PWAs.

Although that is changing slowly. PWAs are starting to get more and more support for APIs on the devices. For example if you install te Microsoft teams app, afaik it’s also just a web app, but bundled with all the rest so that it seems like a normal app.

PWA’s can even have hardware GPU support nowadays.

Regarding Teams, you mean it's a web app on mobile? I thought the MS Teams Windows application was written in that API that uses insane amounts of resources for what it does (although it does work, so I'm not necessarily criticizing using a library that works).