Your Website Can Live on the Home Screen Without App Stores

Most small businesses think there are two choices.

Have a website. Or pay somebody a lot of money to build an app and then ask the app stores for permission to publish it.

There is a third choice, and it has been sitting in every modern browser for years. Your website can install itself on a customer's phone. Its own icon on the home screen. Opens in its own window. No store listing, no review queue, no middleman between you and the person who wanted you there.

It takes one small file. Here is how I did it on this site, and what I would check on yours.

The file is called a manifest

A web app manifest is a small JSON file that tells the browser what your site is called, what its icon looks like, and how it should open once somebody installs it. MDN describes its most common use as giving the browser the information it needs to install a progressive web app on a device.

Google's web.dev guide on the manifest is blunt about it: a manifest is required for an installable web app in every browser. No file, no install.

You link it from every page with one line in the head of your HTML, and you are most of the way there.

What is actually in mine

You can read this site's manifest yourself. It is public. Every installable site's is. Here is what it does, line by line, in plain language.

A name and a short name. The long one is for install screens. The short one is what fits under the icon.

Icons at 192 and 512 pixels, plus a maskable one. The maskable icon is cut so phones that crop icons into circles or rounded squares do not chop off the edges. The web.dev guide warns that without proper icons, some platforms will not let the site install at all.

A display mode of standalone. That is what makes it open in its own window instead of a browser tab with an address bar.

A start address with a tag on it. Mine opens at the home page with a small source tag added. That tag means a visit that starts from the home screen icon can be told apart from a visit that starts from a search or a link.

An id. This one is easy to miss. The web.dev guide points out that if you change your start address later without an id set, the browser can lose track of the fact that the app is already installed. Mine sets an id, so I can change the start address without stranding people who installed it.

Shortcuts. Press and hold the icon on many phones and you get a short menu. Mine has three: Talk to Ryan, The Case, and The Book. Three doors, one tap from the home screen.

A description and screenshots. According to web.dev, on Android, providing at least a description and screenshots changes the install prompt from a plain add to home screen bar into a richer dialog that looks a lot like an app store page. Except the store is your own domain.

What you give up, honestly

I am not going to pretend this is free of tradeoffs.

You do not show up when somebody searches an app store. People find you the way they already find you: search, word of mouth, your own posts, your own list. If you were counting on store discovery, a manifest does not replace it.

Some platforms are pickier than others. The web.dev guide notes that Safari gives you no way to debug a manifest, so the only real test there is to install it on an iPhone or iPad and see what happens. Do that test yourself before you tell customers to install anything.

And a manifest does not make a bad site good. It just puts your site one tap away. If the thing behind the icon is slow or confusing, you have made it easier for people to be disappointed.

A ten minute check for your own site

1. Open your home page source and search for the word manifest. If there is no link to one, you are not installable.
2. If there is one, open the file. Check for a name, a short name, icons at 192 and 512, a start address, and a display mode.
3. Add an id if it is missing, before you ever change your start address.
4. Put a tag on the start address so you can count visits from the icon.
5. Pick two or three shortcuts for the things your best customers do most.
6. Install it on your own phone. Then hand the phone to somebody who has never seen it and watch what they tap.

That is it. No developer account. No review queue. No permission slip.