Web Apps (PWA)

A web app is still a website, but it is built to feel more app-like. When you open it from your home screen, it can launch in its own app-style window instead of a normal browser tab.

This can be useful for things like messaging services, calendars, music players, maps, or other sites you open often.

WebLibre can offer both a standalone website app and a regular home-screen shortcut, even for installable sites. Install as App runs the site standalone in its own window. Add Shortcut opens it as a standard tab in the browser.

After that, Android adds a shortcut for the site to your home screen.

The shortcut starts with the storage context of its source tab, but you can choose a different Storage option before confirming. It uses that chosen context when launched. A standalone website app also remembers whether the source tab used desktop or mobile mode. Reinstall from a tab in your preferred mode to update an existing installation.

The install dialog lets you replace the website’s default title with any name you want. This is useful when:

You can leave the field as the default if the site’s own name is already what you want.

The install dialog also includes a Storage option that decides how cookies, logins, and site data are scoped for that shortcut.

Available choices are:

The new isolated context option is the right choice for opening a second account on the same site without having to log out of the first one.

If you install from a tab that is already inside a cookie-isolated container, that container is preselected automatically. The dialog does not list other containers: to use a different one, open the site in that container first, then install it.

You can pin the same website multiple times with different names and storage contexts. For example:

Shortcuts using different isolated contexts or cookie-isolated containers keep their sessions apart. Shortcuts using the same storage context share cookies and logins, even if their names differ.

When you tap a PWA shortcut and that PWA is already running, WebLibre brings the existing instance to the front instead of starting a new one.

If a PWA loses its session because Android stopped the browser in the background, WebLibre’s PWA session recovery automatically restores it on the next launch instead of dropping you on the main screen or crashing.

PWAs opened from home screen shortcuts keep their original profile and the storage context chosen during installation. Container-backed apps share that container’s login state and connection settings.

If the shortcut uses Tor or a proxy, WebLibre starts that connection automatically and waits before loading the page, without asking first. If the connection cannot start, the shortcut does not fall back to a direct connection. See Proxy Connections.

Login, payment, and other flows that use window.open or popup windows stay within the PWA flow instead of being lost behind the standalone window.

Fullscreen video in a WebLibre web app can enter Android Picture-in-Picture when you press Home or switch apps, then return to the same PWA when you come back. Permission prompts do not trigger Picture-in-Picture by themselves.

Every shortcut gets an icon, even for sites that do not provide one. That keeps shortcuts easy to find on the home screen and avoids blank tiles.

Add to Home Screen appears for pages served over HTTPS or HTTP on localhost. On other pages, the action is hidden.

On a secure page, you can choose Install as App or Add Shortcut.

This includes sites that were not built as web apps, because Settings > Browsing > Install Sites as Apps is on by default. Such sites may look or behave less like an app in their own window. If you turn the setting off, WebLibre offers Install as App only for sites with a valid web app manifest that supports an app-style display, and Add Shortcut only for other sites.

Standalone installation does not add offline support. Whether a site works offline depends on the site itself.

If you install a web app from a tab in a container with Cookie Isolation enabled and keep that Storage choice, the installed web app uses the container’s browsing context. That means its cookies and site data stay separated just like regular tabs from that same cookie-isolated container.

To install a web app in a particular container, first open the site in that cookie-isolated container. The install dialog offers that container under Storage; it does not let you pick an unrelated container.

Installed web apps also stay tied to the profile they came from.

In practice, that means a web app shortcut can reopen with the same broader browsing context, not only the same site. This is useful if you use profiles to separate work, personal, or shared-device browsing.

Taken together, profile context and container context help the installed web app behave more like a continuation of the original tab you installed it from.