With a capacitor app it can be both a PWA and a native app from the same code base. This wouldn’t take away, only add possible functionality for those who choose to install it natively.

There’s a lot of native functionality that a PWA cannot access, like app icon changing, certain gestures that Apollo took advantage of (tapping on the top to scroll to the top, for one), and some other things that have been requested.

Well... Part of that is just that web apps have much worse efficiency and performance compared to native apps. That's not to say their performance and efficiency is bad, but a native app will beat a web app everytime. The DOM and JavaScript are just not great models in terms of efficiency and performance.

imo we need a webapp alternative and voyager is it.

Many people have not heard of web apps, they do not know how to find or install web apps.

Most of them are more familiar with the app stores. They are more comfortable using what they are familiar with. They might have been using the app store since the original Angry Bird was released.

It is good to have choices.

The user experience is nicer as a native app, if done right. With a PWA, you have to deal with anything crappy that the browser inflicts on you, and the developer largely can't do anything about it. For example, Chrome sometimes just crashes or freezes entirely on me, which means Voyager can too.

See elsewhere in this thread for examples of little things that stem solely from being a PWA .

Don't get me wrong, I think Voyager is great for a PWA and it probably gets a lot of value out of being a PWA making it easier for people to contribute. But it's just not as good as native for me.

The developers can bring out both.

Most native apps are still JS in an app. Memmy is React for instance. So WefWef would be offered as both.

My biggest problem with the webapp is that it fills my Chrome history, so it basically becomes useless.

ever heard of React Native?

Voyager is perfect as is.

Except for the scrolling issue on iOS. If they don’t figure out a way to resolve that, I don’t care how many features they keep adding, I’m out. I’ve been tolerating it so far, and everybody keeps hand waving it away with “it’s a limitation of safari” and “all you have to do is not touch the screen for a second and it works like normal”. Uhh…no. This needs to be fixed. Once people have multiple other options, that don’t have this hindrance, (and honestly, I think we’re probably well past that point already) I can’t imagine too many people wanting to use this app vs literally any other choice.

Capacitor apps can be both.

Nothing is so perfect that it can’t be complained about. Also, voyager definitely has some (admittedly smaller) annoyances that stem from it being a web app.

I don’t think them making the native app wrapper means the PWA is going away

don’t need to be at the mercy of Apple or Google to get into the official stores.

Ipa/apk s exist though, they can just have those on the website and not care about the official stores

will likely be coming though

^^

Agree. This is a ridiculously good implementation and I don’t understand why nobody has gotten this right until now. Hallelujah holy shit.

Voyager has converted me into a PWA believer.

I agree, that’s what the "sort of" stands for. Depending on how the implementation would look like, it might still make some of the small annoyances that I currently have go away (scroll-to-top, back swipe, scrolling hiccup, multiple app icons, haptics, …).

I think it’s mostly the interactions that feel a lot snappier in native apps