1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if you want guaranteed reliability. Run a Blossom server for media. Use email for auth and store people's keys for them if you want a traditional UX. Don't worry about what's on Nostr already, just build your own thing on the protocol.
Let people come and go as they please and don't lock them in. They will love you for it later.
> Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
I’ve worked on a platform for social media apps. When the social network had a native iOS app, a native Android app, and a PWA, users chose iOS about two thirds of the time, Android about a quarter of the time, and PWA about 10% of the time. That’s across all users, including desktop, so the PWA actually had an unfair advantage.
People strongly prefer native apps to PWAs, especially for social media.
Such a conclusion cannot reasonably be made from the data you have presented. It merely means that your web app was not preferred over your native app.
> Such a conclusion cannot reasonably be made from the data you have presented.
I’m responding to somebody who presented the following with absolutely nothing to back it up:
> Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
The stats I’ve seen point in the opposite direction and I see no reason not to share that. Why are you giving them a free pass to share their opinion with zero stats but pull me up when I actually base my opinion on real stats? Looking past somebody saying “a surprising number” to complain about somebody sharing actual numbers is bizarre.
> It merely means that your web app was not preferred over your native app.
No, I’m talking about hundreds of apps hosting a wide range of independent communities. It wasn’t a single app for a single demographic.
This should not be a controversial stance. Saying that people prefer native to PWA on the desktop is not a controversial stance and the advantages for native on mobile are even more pronounced. The very existence of the App Store came about because when Steve Jobs told everybody if they wanted to build apps for the iPhone they should be web apps, the market demanded native apps.
PWA uptake is dismal. People strongly prefer native apps.
No. There were no ads, no invasive tracking, no obnoxious pushes to move people to native – we didn’t care which platform people used. People just genuinely prefer native apps to PWAs. This should not be a controversial statement.
If you say that people prefer native desktop apps to web apps, you’ll get a lot of agreement – people complaining about Electron, Slack using up all their RAM, etc.
If you say that people prefer native mobile apps to web apps – a setting where the advantage of native is even more pronounced – then all of a sudden you get a bunch of people who simply refuse to believe that this is true.
I’ve noticed a lot of overlap between the people who reject this and people who dislike the App Store for other reasons (e.g. locked down devices). I think the difference between accepting people prefer native on desktop vs mobile is not primarily driven by facts but by ideology. People who dislike App Stores are inclined to prefer PWAs and they prefer to believe everybody is like them despite it being pretty obvious this is not actually true.
When the Renaissance Periodization team came out with an app that was a PWA, many in the fitness community (read: not as aware of the benefits of a PWA) panned it for just being a "website" rather than an app; people don't understand PWAs or even web apps or any of the parlance we use or the differences in implementation we are so often aware of to the point of not realising how the average person views them
That might be true for the tech giants but it’s not true in the typical case. In our case, we didn’t care which platform people used, and if anything, the owners of the apps preferred people to use the web because many of them were selling subscription services and didn’t want to hand over 15% to the app stores.
“Getting data on people” is just not that attractive for most apps. Are Reddit motivated by things like that? Sure. But it’s just not that valuable for everybody else.
You know what is attractive? Giving customers what they want. And customers want native apps.
But people are used to that now being the normal state of things, it's rare that they even try the browser -- I develop an application that is web only and typically used on desktops, and people incessantly ask me for "an app so they can use it on their phone".
They probably want an icon to open your app. They probably dont know the difference between an app rendered with a browser or a truly native app. In the past apple as made it difficult for users to know how to do this and users just know about the app store. Great for apple (walled garden) and social media apps (more tracking, unlimited ads) but not great for users.
> In the past apple as made it difficult for users to know how to do this
The mechanism to add a web app to the home screen has remained pretty unchanged from iPhoneOS 1.0 (2007) to iOS 18 (2024) – you tap the action button (sometimes called the “share” button despite it being a misnomer), then you tap “Add to Home Screen”. It’s the same as adding a bookmark, printing, or sharing the link with somebody.
That is the process they designed before the App Store existed when they were telling everybody if you want to build apps for the iPhone then they should be web apps, so I don’t think you can reasonably consider this process to be intentionally difficult.
This changed slightly in iOS 26 because you need to tap the meatball icon to bring up the menu and pick “Share…”, but given that this only happened six months ago, I don’t think that’s what you were referring to by “in the past”?
Yes, that's the "workaround" I use but by default people are expecting to find something in the app store.
> They probably dont know the difference between an app rendered with a browser or a truly native app.
Absolutely, users do not know or care what technology you are using so long as it meets their expectations of use. Users are going to the app store as a discovery mechanism for "something that gives them an icon on the phone to get to that thing", most have no clue what "native code" means.
Yes, of course some people will feel that way, but also having less friction is not always necessarily a good thing because it requires less of a time investment for the user to get started, so therefore they are actually more likely to just churn. It is a balance
Granted, there's a lot of crap apps out there. But properly built apps are a world apart from your typical PWA's or web sites (or even really good ones)
We’re not normies, so take that with a grain of salt. Here’s mine: apps have access to significantly expanded capabilities which has privacy implications. If I can use the browser for a given app, I do it. Amazon for example.
As a native app writer, this has been my experience.
Mentioning it here, though, tends to get pushback from folks that write Web apps. They don’t want to admit that native apps have more capabilities than Web apps; even if that’s a bad thing, because of security risks.
Personally I'll only install FOSS apps on my phone and I go out of my way to actively discourage (to varying degrees of success) my relatives from installing arbitrary junk that they surely don't need on their phones.
People say PWAs are good as apps now and feels like an app now, personally as ab armchair nobody I doubt the retention rate actually compare, even if the app was literally just a plain WebView.
If one is going through the hassle of joining a video call on a different device to then scan it with their smartphone, all to just connect with another person, you could reasonably assume that they're friends.
Maybe if there's a "celebrity" that displays it on a live stream, that's a bigger issue, but there could be other mechanisms to dissuade this behaviour. Perhaps you could only add one friend with one QR code.
1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if you want guaranteed reliability. Run a Blossom server for media. Use email for auth and store people's keys for them if you want a traditional UX. Don't worry about what's on Nostr already, just build your own thing on the protocol.
Let people come and go as they please and don't lock them in. They will love you for it later.
Cool project. Have fun!