What is a PWA
PWA stands for progressive web app. It is an app that runs in the browser but behaves like an installed one: an icon on the home screen, full screen with no address bar, and it keeps working offline for whatever already loaded.
The difference that matters is not technical. It is where it comes from: a link, not a store.
What makes it feel like an app
- an icon on the home screen, next to the others;
- opens full screen, with no browser chrome;
- works offline for whatever already loaded;
- reaches camera, files and location, with the same permission prompts as always;
- updates itself, with nobody having to download anything.
How it gets installed
On Android, the browser offers the install on its own, and the app lands in the drawer like any other.
On iPhone, it goes through Safari: Share, then "Add to Home Screen". It works well, and it has one real problem: almost nobody does it unless invited. If the PWA is your iOS strategy, that invitation has to live in the app, spelled out.
Notifications, the part that confuses people
On Android, PWA notifications have worked for years.
On iPhone they work from iOS 16.4, with one condition: the app must have been added to the Home Screen first. So notifications exist, but they depend on a step most users never take.
That is why the practical rule still holds: if the product depends on reaching everybody by notification on iPhone, the path is a native app.
When a PWA is the right answer
- menus, catalogues, portfolios, price lists;
- booking and service forms;
- internal team tools;
- the first version of anything, to find out whether anyone uses it;
- an app that has to go live today, with no store review.
In those cases it delivers the same result, the same day, with no annual fee and no review queue.
When it is not
- notifications as part of the product, on iPhone;
- deep system features: background Bluetooth, contact integration, widgets;
- store discovery: if people search for you by name in the App Store, being there is the product.
The full criteria, with the three cases side by side, are in native app, PWA or website.
The summary
- a PWA is an app that arrives by link instead of by store;
- icon, full screen, offline use and automatic updates;
- notifications work on Android, and on iPhone only after it is on the Home Screen;
- it covers most small-business apps, with no fee and no review;
- it does not cover mass notifications on iOS, system features or store discovery.