Web apps have long become viable alternatives to native apps on Windows and macOS — in fact, they are one reason why many ofthe best Chromebooksare more than good enough for a lot of people. In Google’s quest to make web apps feel ever more native, the company is working on adding some additional tweaks to web apps on desktop operating systems, giving those apps a more standalone appearance than ever before.
As spotted by Chrome expert@Leopeva64 on X(formerly Twitter), the current Chrome Canary release, version 122, adds a web app’s icon to its title bar by default. On Windows, it sits in the top left corner of the window, moving the back and reload buttons a little to the right. If you rely on your muscle memory to use these, you may have to readjust a little. On the bright side, the addition of the icon makes it easier to spot a web app instantly on your screen, especially if it doesn’t have any noticeable identifying features.
While this tweak seems to be active on Windows for Leopeva64, we haven’t been able to recreate it on macOS. It’s possible that adding the icon to the title bar involves flipping some switches inchrome://flagsor other tweaks. A few years ago, Google also started allowing developers to tweak the title bar to their own preferences, allowing them to add features like search bars or images. With this, developers will likely be able to override showing the app icon.
Another tweak Leopeva64 spottedis making an even bigger splash. With Chrome Canary, notifications from web apps will now correctly show their icons and names rather than the generic Chrome symbol on Windows. For example, a notification sent from the X web app will now show the service’s icon and name rather than just saying “Google Chrome.” In the past, you could quickly identify where a notification came from by looking at the URL at the bottom of the notification card, but the tweak makes it much more obvious, especially if you use multiple web apps.
While the new notification style seems to be available on Windows without any tweaks, you may have to enable thechrome://flags/#enable-mac-pwas-notification-attributionflag on macOS. On Android, installed web apps have long supported showing notifications with their own icon and name.
Meanwhile, Google is also showing some love for web apps on Android. A while back, the company was spottedworking on a simple restore optionwhen you set up your new phone. Upon opening Chrome, you’ll be prompted to set up web apps you’ve had on your old phone in bulk, allowing you to select all or none. Last time we saw this feature, it was still in early stages and only showed sample data, though.
