Chrome 70 brings Progressive Web Apps

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we were celebrating the arrival of Chrome 69. The tenth anniversary of the browser went down well initially but that reception soon soured when people realized they were being logged into all Google services without being notified. Now Chrome 70 is here and brings with it Progressive Web Apps (PWA).

The first news about Chrome 70 is that you are no longer logged into Google services without being notified. While a minor deal in security terms it was a big deal in terms of trust. Our trust in Google took a big hit with that update and the company quickly realized that and rolled it back. That’s a good thing but it’s going to take a while before I’ll suggest Chrome as your default browser again.

You will have to manually set Chrome to not log you in though so it isn’t all good news. Open Chrome, navigate to Help and About Chrome to update. Once done, restart your browser and navigate to Settings and scroll down to Advanced. Toggle off ‘Allow Chrome sign-in’.

Progressive Web Apps

The other news with Chrome 70 is the inclusion of Progressive Web Apps. These apps are a way for app developers to make browser apps look more like native Windows apps or mobile apps. They don’t look like an app running in a browser and look and feel like a standard computer app.

Essentially Progressive Web Apps are what a browser app, a desktop app and mobile app would look like if they all collided and became one.

There are advantages to this. A PWA app doesn’t have to save screen real estate for the browser bar, URL bar, favorites bar or any of the other clutter of the browser. Instead, it can dedicate all the space it likes to design and core features. While not earth shattering in its inventiveness, it is a steady progression of app design and one that should work better for us users.

Installing Progressive Web Apps

Once you have Chrome 70, you’re ready to take advantage of Progressive Web Apps. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there are only a couple of PWA apps available. One is for Spotify and one is for Twitter. This website called PWA Rocks has a list of other PWA apps but I haven’t tried any of them.

More PWA apps will arrive as time goes on. Even though Google signaled support for PWA apps a while ago, very few are available right now.

If you need help with browsers, browsing, internet security or anything else, we can help. The computer repair guys at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey can assist with any computer or networking issue you may have. Bring your computer to our store and we will see what we can do!