Many web apps have become so powerful today that they’re barely distinguishable from native applications. They can even be distributed via the Play Store, as is the case with Twitter Light, for example (yes, that app is still called Twitter for some reason, not X). Web apps can also simply be installed via your browser, and they will behave no differently from apps installed via the Play Store — except for when you switch to a new device. While you’re able to easily restore all of your Play Store apps, you need to reinstall web apps manually. It looks like Chrome is looking into a restore function of its own to fix this oversight.
A newchrome://flags/#pwa-restore-uiflag has appeared in the latest Chrome Canary release, version 121, asspotted by AssembleDebug. Its description tells us that when it’s enabled, “the PWA Restore UI can be shown.” PWA here is short for progressive web app, which is the kind of web app you can install and run almost like a native app (in very simple terms). However, enabling the flag currently only brings up a placeholder interface that isn’t functional yet. It will show three sample web apps as placeholders, and hitting the “Restore web apps” button doesn’t do anything. The interface gives us a good idea of what the feature will work like, though, along withsome GitHub commitsAssembleDebug spotted, too.
The interface will show up at some point when you first launch Chrome on a new device, but only if it detects that you left behind web apps on your previous device. Google will also be careful to show the prompt only once as to not nag users who may not want to restore web apps. The preliminary interface itself gives us some more hints at how Google determines which apps to surface. It reads, “Choose web apps to restore on this device. Apps shown here are based on your Chrome history.” This is followed by bold text stating, “Web apps used in the last month.”
It’s possible that the exact wording and the exact cutoff date may still change, but the gist of this feature will likely remain in place: It will allow you to restore any web apps that aren’t available on the Play Store, making the switch to a new Android phone even easier. Now, if only Google would offer a more solid backup system that save full system images to the cloud to prevent data loss in the first place, likesome people upgrading their Pixel phones to Android 14 painfully learned.
When it comes to web apps, Google is making the installation process more seamless. Earlier this year, the company introduced a new optional bottom panel that developers canadd to the installation prompt for web apps,bringing the process more in line with the Play Store.
