our beanies app made a wish to become a real boy

Without googling, how many people here know what a PWA is?

take your time. i’ll wait.

Ok. Time’s up.

In simple terms, a PWA (progressive web app) is just your website, running on your phone, without your browser’s shell around it. It’s a website that you can launch from your home screen. To a user, once a PWA is installed, it looks like an app and it feels like an app - but it’s not an app.

you keep telling yourself that, beanies.family PWA.

The difference is subtle, but important.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of PWAs. PWAs may be one of the most potentially impactful movements in the history of mobile apps, but unless you’re either a technology writer or a developer yourself, you may not even realize that they exist.

To install a PWA, you simply add a PWA-enabled mobile website to your home screen from the browser’s menu on your phone. This is where almost anybody who hasn’t heard of a PWA gets tripped up. It feels confusing, because the process to simply add a browser bookmark to your phone is exactly the same.

PWAs can be designed to feel like they are almost no different from apps, but that initial friction to get them installed is a major factor that prevents them from truly taking over the app world. In addition, some cool stuff that native apps can do easily, such as send push notifications, access bluetooth, get location data, and more, are either difficult or impossible to do on a PWA.

The reason Apple and Google hate PWAs (or, at the very least, are decidedly ambivalent about them) is that they exist outside of the walled gardens of their respective app stores. PWAs can be installed from literally any website, and PWA revenue doesn’t flow through Apple or Google’s payment providers.

Apple and Google have therefore trained their users well - ignore the fact that PWAs exist, do very little to help guide users to that option, and reinforce the message that “apps” are only what you can download from the official app stores.

So while PWAs are technically (but reluctantly) supported, Apple and Google do nothing to make them easy to find or install, making them essentially invisible to users. At the same time, the process to build and release a native app to one or both of the official app stores is, to put it mildly, annoying.

Official apps have slightly better usability, much better visibility, and the full support of the major app store providers. For all these reasons, native apps still win.

Given that, vibe coders have a choice to make.

it’s decision time, buddy boy

While I originally thought that beanies.family could exist solely as a PWA and desktop app, I quickly realized I was wrong. Case in point is that nearly every person I talk to about my app proceeds to open their phone’s app store and start searching for it, while I maddeningly backtrack and attempt to explain what a PWA is. I’m tired, and the app store mentality is ingrained.

For the past month or so, I’ve been muddling through the Apple and Google app store approval processes.

To be honest, I’m actually excited about the prospect of a real, official app (my very first one). It genuinely opens up the possibility for useful features, the most important being the ability to simply push actual, reliable reminders to your phone when you need to do important things like pick up your kid, or buy presents for that upcoming birthday party (while PWAs can technically send push notifications, it requires twisting your app into a proverbial technical pretzel, as opposed to being a straightforward, out-of-the-box capability.)

Other cool stuff includes local filesystem access (for those who want to run beanies on a local file), native bluetooth, location access (anyone interested in a feature where you could privately and securely track your child’s location?), and lots more.

So, long story short, the official Google Play Store beanies.family Android app is already here!

(As for Apple, the process is slower. I’ll let you know when they let me know. But hopefully iOS will not be more than a few weeks away.)

To be clear, beanies.family will always exist as a website and PWA, for those who prefer that interface, or run beanies locally. But to a lot of people, the native app is what makes it real.

I’m looking forward to offering more ways for families to take care of their daily tasks, manage their money and plans, and generally get more organized, because that’s what’s important - families being able to find, use, and enjoy beanies. Not some personal tech crusade by an indie developer against trillion-dollar corporations who forcefully wrangle you into their walled app gardens.

At least, I’ll keep telling myself that while I’m filling out these endless app store forms.

Our little PWA has grown up to be a real boy. I’m so proud. I hope you are, too.

greg

By the way, if you enjoy the new apps, let me know (or tell me what to build next) on discord.