Tim Hardwick
Google Chrome will soon let you install any web page as a desktop app on your Mac, just like Apple's Safari browser does in macOS Sonoma (via Android Police).
The new feature was spotted by X (Twitter) user Leopeva64 in the latest Chrome Canary build, which includes a new option called “Set Page as app”, which can be found in “Settings” ➝ “Save and Share”. Websites like YouTube and Reddit that already have their own web apps will also automatically appear in this menu as additional installations.
Choosing the “Install page as an app” option will prompt you to “Install application” as shown in the image below. Web apps are automatically saved in an Applications subfolder called Chrome Canary Apps, where you can optionally drag them to your Dock in macOS.
Currently, the implementation of web applications in Chrome is more complex than in Safari, since it not only provides a simplified toolbar with navigation buttons, but also a stripped-down settings menu with options such as ” Copy URL”, “Open”. in Chrome, delete, zoom, print, search and edit, and cast.
- Here's how web apps work in macOS Sonoma
This feature comes courtesy of a long-standing Chrome support for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), which Google initially used as a replacement for Chrome apps in the Google Play Store.
Users can try out this feature before it launches in the stable build of Chrome by downloading the latest Canary 124 update and enabling the two new flags. To do this, copy and paste the following links into the address bar:
- chrome://flags/#web-app-universal-install
- chrome://flags/#shortcuts -not-apps
Chrome 123 is currently in beta and is expected to be released to the public soon, so PWA support for web pages will not be in the next version , but the next stable build after that.
Tag: Google Chrome[ 81 comments ]
