Hi all,
A while ago @GaelDuval posted the summer update and asked the community to tell /e/ team about Android apps which have good PWA alternatives.
Since I haven’t seen anyone start this topic yet I’ll start it!
Cheers 
I have tried some but see no differnt to normal web access
hello, just a little question : do you have notifications with PWA’s apps like twitter for example?
thanks.
Same as you use it in Browser. That means NO, only if your browser (pwa) is running active
I use twitter in PWA.
There is no notifications. Which is pretty cool for me because I don’t like to hear my phone ringing every minute…
And I advise everybody around me to shut off every notification (besides sms & calls).
Hi @Gregoire I thought there were notifications on Twitter Lite? At least, I remember disabling them as I found them so annoying! 
Hi @b3pio, which are your favourite PWAs from that site?
@harvey186, you’re right, in a way, PWAs are the same as normal web access - a PWA can use the same code as a website. However for a website to be a PWA it needs to use certain things - a manifest, service workers and local storage. These technologies allow offline functionality, such that a PWA may be able to run completely locally, depending on its needs. For example, https://notepad.js.org/ can be used offline (not a very sophisticated example, but it is an example). PWAs will also run as a separate app so they can be controlled separately from the browser, but all the configuration settings e.g. cookies are still controlled by the browser settings, so they’re not completely separate.
@GaelDuval mentioned somewhere that some banking websites are available as PWAs, does anyone know any examples?
Hello everyone,
PWA seems to be the near future of mobile web but what about privacy? We know that native apps include trackers but what would be the interest of Google to propose the Google Maps PWA (https://appsco.pe/app/googlemaps) ? Same for twitter and others.
I looked for this kind of thing and read this article https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com/tracking-users-with-rogue-progressive-web-applications/
How much do we know about privacy and PWA? If we use an appropriate browser such as Brave that blocks trackers, ads and more, can we consider we are ‘safe’?
I initiate the debate. If you guys have advanced knowledge about this topic, please feel free to post opinions, experiences, links, etc.
Thanks for your help and contribution!
Cheers,
That what we need is a PWA builder. There are some in Web, but not easy to understand.
I’m using several PWA’s
Twitter
Instagram
Bitpanda
Lovoo
Community.e.foundation
Uber
And all working fine
Hi @martin3418,
As far as I know a (pure*) uses the privacy settings etc of the browser from which it was downloaded. E.g. if you download a PWA from Firefox and add it to your homescreen it will use the settings of Firefox, so you only need to change the settings within the browser.
*Pure PWA: There are some PWAs on the Play Store, but these are not pure PWAs, they are a PWA wrapped in an APK wrapper so they can be “installed”. I don’t know exactly how settings for these work but I presume they use the built-in Android WebView and therefore settings are controlled by that.
PWAs are in principle cross-platform and can often need less resources to run than “native” apps. This means they can run on more platforms and only one codebase needs to be maintained. This is why Google, Twitter, et al. are interested in using them. And most people use Chrome blindly, so the potential loss of tracking info isn’t much of a concern to the tech giants.
Regarding that link to the discussion of persistent identifiers in PWAs, thanks That’s an interesting problem that Lukasz has found. I see that the Firefox team have discussed it but not yet addressed it. If you put the article link in a search engine you will see that Brave have noted it (but not discussed) and I didn’t find an entry for Chrome…
@harvey186 what do you mean “PWA builder” - a tool which takes a website and makes it into a PWA? That’s an interesting idea but I don’t know how easily it can be implemented, I think it will vary site to site.
Cheers
Yes, search qwant for ‘online pwa builder’ and you will find some one. But it’s not so easy to create. I have given up, because of less time to learn
Is it e.g. m.uber.com - this would be the PWA for uber?
I suppose creating a separate icon for it and opening the browser with the PWA would provide a very similar user experience like a native app.
no. use this URL
http://m.uber.com/?force=pwa&source=mlpwa
You can try on all URLs with adding ?force=pwa&source=mlpwa after the normal URL.
Like https://community.e.foundation/?force=pwa&source=mlpwa
I get the exact same login screen both after m.uber.com or http://m.uber.com/?force=pwa&source=mlpwa. After email and password it sends a pin in order to confirm the login. It’s good as Uber Lite does not work here.
Do you used a chrome based browser and saved the link on homescreen ?
Best using the default -browser
“Best” is a matter of opinion. PWA add to homescreen works with Firefox too 
that could be, I don’t use spying Mozilla apps
EDITED: Made some changes below to get my facts right. Like I said, nobody’s perfect
Ah, I forgot you’re another one of the people to irrationally distrust Mozilla and have yet to demonstrate what spying you believe they do. Have you got any further with that?
You do remember that (new text) /e/ still leaks data from various points don’t you? https://gitlab.e.foundation/search?group_id=&project_id=&repository_ref=&scope=issues&search=Infosec+Handbook+Review
(deleted: “/e/ still pings Google for connection checking don’t you? Therefore /e/ sends your IP address to Google as a matter of routine.”)
I think it would be in all of our best interests if we stopped looking for white knights and taking fundamentalist viewpoints and instead realised that the world is grey, there is no black and white, no perfect solution. We need to be pragmatic. Mozilla is one of the most successful FLOSS companies, it broke Microsoft’s monopoly on web browsers, ensured that the web follows open standards and has done more than any other mainstream browser vendor to improve our online privacy.
So, nobody’s perfect
Including me, as this post was way off-topic
yes, it is really out of topic 