Learning Progressive Web Apps: Building Modern Web Apps Using Service Workers

2. Web App Manifest Files

One of the features of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) is the ability to configure a web app so users can install the app on the device running the app. Mobile users have been able to do this sort of thing for a long time, through the Save to Home Screen option available in mobile browsers, but PWAs deliver a better user experience.

The component that delivers this capability to PWAs is an app’s web app manifest file. In this chapter, I introduce web app manifests and show you how you can use them to make your web app installable.

Note

Throughout the remainder of the book, I refer to a web app manifest by its full name but may also refer to it as a manifest or manifest file.

For those who already know a bit about manifests ...