Brady Eidson
As of iOS and iPadOS 16.4, web apps saved to your Home Screen support badging!
We've heard questions about the deets, so we wrote a blog post with the deets.
https://webkit.org/blog/14112/badging-for-home-screen-web-apps/
Badging for Home Screen Web Apps

Along with the many other features for web apps on iOS and iPadOS 16.4, WebKit now includes support for the W3C’s Badging API.

WebKit
Apr 25, 2023 at 6:56pmWeb
Show threadMarkApr 25, 2023
@bradeeoh can we talk about how absolutely nobody expects to find add to home buried inside of a share menu. It’s like Facebook trying to hide the GDPR settings.
Show threadAlex Crocker | Domain InvestorApr 25, 2023
@mdh @bradeeoh It's been in the share menu since early iOS days. I'm pretty sure even your grandma knows about it even if they don't know what it is.
Show threadMarkApr 25, 2023

@croc @bradeeoh let’s not resort to making stuff up. Nobody knows it is there. Famously so. What the fact that is has always been that way has to do with anything is also not super clear here.

It’s a terrible place to put it and is basically a pretty textbook dark pattern. We *could* change that though.

Show threadSasha ChudesnovApr 25, 2023

@bradeeoh this is a very welcome change.

But web apps still don’t feel like 1-class citizens. For example, both web apps I have installed on my Home Screen suddenly stopped working with VoiceOver while Safari tabs with the exact same apps work perfectly fine. I only found out because I was testing some stuff but I can imagine how frustrating that would be if I actually relied on VO on a daily basis, I’d probably stop using those glorified shortcuts altogether and just use a native app instead.

Show threadBrady EidsonApr 28, 2023
@chudesnov Thanks for the report. We tried a few different web apps and could not reproduce what you describe.
The exercise did actually reveal a few VO bugs we weren't aware of yet, but they reproduced in both Safari and on the Home Screen. And were nowhere near "VO stopped working"
Could you tell us more about what device you're using, what specific OS version, what specific Web App, etc?
Show threadSasha ChudesnovApr 28, 2023

@bradeeoh the device is iPhone 12 mini with iOS 16.4.1. The apps were Twitter and pinafore.social. The specific issue was that VoiceOver didn’t “see” _any_ elements of the app, just its scrollbar.

I restarted the device a couple of times yesterday and now cannot reproduce the issue so I assume it had something to do with a long-running instance of an app (yep, know that’s not the most exciting thing to debug), both of which are SPAs

Show threadBrady EidsonMay 1, 2023
@chudesnov This has been added to the radar we're tracking with. Thank you!
Show threadsafApr 26, 2023
@bradeeoh May I please ask a very basic question? Is there a way to disable web apps from running in the background? Basically, I wonder whether web apps could be used as a sandboxed alternative to installed apps.
Show threadBrady EidsonApr 27, 2023
@saf Currently, web apps on iOS and iPadOS cannot run in the background unless the user has granted them notifications permission and their server sends a push.
Show threadsafApr 27, 2023
@bradeeoh @saf Thank you very much!