Making our app installable - iOS

Apple hasn't come out in support of Progressive Web Apps, as of the time of writing. There's numerous theories as to why (their revenue-generating App Store ecosystem, competition with Google, lack of control), but it does mean that the process of making our app installable is much more manual.

Let's be clear--the optimal PWA experience, as of now, will be for a user on the latest version of Chrome, on an Android device.

However, PWAs are also all about progressive enhancement, a concept we'll cover in more depth in the later chapters. Progressive enhancement means we deliver the best possible experience for each user on their device; if they can support all the shiny new stuff, great, otherwise, we do our best with the tools they are using.

So, let's go through the process of making our UX delightful for an iPhone user who wants to save our app to their home screen.

We'll use lots of <meta> tags to tell the browser that our app is installable. Let's start...