YouTube.com can now be installed as Progressive Web App: All you need to know

The website of the popular video platform YouTube is now available as a Progressive Web App or PWA. This means the browser page will work like an app without the need to actually install an app. PWA support for the main YouTube site was rolled out after YouTube Music and YouTube TV received the same earlier. Google announced that it was bringing Stadia as a PWA to iOS recently. Also, Google Photos has PWA support since 2018. One of the other popular applications that can be used as a PWA is Twitter. In 2017, Google showed how Twitter Lite PWA was able to significantly increase engagement and reduce data usage. [caption id=“attachment_8609791” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] While PWA are supposed to work “everywhere”, Google says with continuous and repeated use, experience with a PWA version of an app is going to get smoother. Image: Pixabay[/caption] Google defines PWA as “experiences that combine the best of the web and the best of apps”. The Progressive Web Apps go from pages in browser tabs to being more “immersive” like top-level apps, but at the same time “maintaining the web’s low friction at every moment”. While PWA are supposed to work “everywhere”, Google says with continuous and repeated use, experience with a PWA version of an app is going to get smoother. It will offer very fast loading time even on slow network connections with the help of service workers, along with sending relevant Push Notifications and having an icon on the user’s home screen that can load them as a fullscreen app experience. As per Google, PWAs are responsive as they fit any form factor, be it a desktop, mobile, or tablet. These are independent of connectivity support as they come with service workers, allowing users to work offline or on low quality networks. It is going to work on any browser and feel user-friendly like any app. PWAs also ensure no snooping is going to hamper or affect your security as it is served via TLS. even without actually installing anything, users will be able to save its icon on their home screen and share its URL with others.