Over the weekend, Apple started releasing iOS 16.4 for iPhone users, which includes a bunch of new features and improvements, not the least of which is web app notification support.
So what are the web apps in iOS 16.4 and how do you use them?
The Progressive Web Application (PWA) provides a fast and unique way to access the website and its services without installing a dedicated application. You can add any website to your home screen as an app without taking up much space on your phone. So it is a simple solution to quickly access your favorite websites without apps.
iOS has allowed users to create and use web apps for years, but those apps were missing some features, the most important of which: notification support.
And now, starting with iOS 16.4, you can pin websites as shortcuts to your iPhone's home screen, access notifications from those apps, and control notifications as a whole or each individual app from your phone's settings.
Notifications from web apps work like notifications from other apps: They appear on the Lock screen, in Notification Center, and on the Apple Watch that's paired with your device.
To configure web apps and manage their notifications in iOS 16.4:
- Go to the Safari browser on your iPhone.
- Go to the website you want to add as an app to your phone screen, but first you need to check if it has a Progressive Web Application (PWA), you can check this link.
- Click on the Share icon at the bottom of the screen, scroll down the list of options that appears until you reach the Add to Home Screen option, and then click on it.
- Enter a name for the site - it will appear on the home screen - and click Add.
To configure notifications in a web app, you can follow these steps:
- Open the web app that you added to your iPhone home screen.
- Look at the option settings (Push Notifications) and enable it.
- A popup will appear asking for your consent to receive notifications. Click Allow to allow the web app to send you notifications as if it were a normal app.
For websites that don't offer a progressive web app to access their content, you can add them to your phone's home screen in the same way mentioned earlier, but instead of opening them as an app, they will open in Safari.
This step allows you to access the website in one click instead of having to open a browser and type in the URL of the website to access it.