The way you surf the Internet is changing. Since always, the way to see visiting our favorite websites has been by saving them in bookmarks, or by memorizing their URL, and accessing it from the browser every time we wanted to. However, in recent months a new concept of web applications that can change the way we visit websites or social networks is gaining weight: this is the PWA that we can install with Edge, Chrome and other browsers.
What are PWAs?
Progressive web applications , also known as PWA, are a type of application that is installed on the computer but instead of having an executable, and all the content on the hard disk, they work from the browser in streaming. Broadly speaking, they are like shortcuts to the websites that we want that we can install on our PC.
When executing a PWA , instead of opening a program as such, a special window of our browser opens, without menus, extensions or navigation bar, from which we can access the web in question. These progressive web applications, apparently, work like Twitter, Facebook or other platforms that we can find on our mobile, but designed to work on Windows. Furthermore, thanks to the cache, which is saved individually by each application , we can visit the pages without the need for an Internet connection.
Even little by little we are able to have more control over these types of applications, being able to control their permissions and even configuring them to start automatically with the PC.
Advantages of these apps
Some of the advantages of this type of application are:
- They are progressive and responsive, that is, they work on any browser and device.
- They can work without an internet connection.
- If style is the same as native applications.
- They can show notifications to the user.
- They allow us to control the permissions of each website individually.
- They are automatically updated in the backend without the user having to do anything.
- They use secure protocols like HTTPS and TLS.
- They do not take up space.
Install a PWA from Edge
Not all websites are prepared to be installed as PWA in Edge, so we will not be able to create applications of this type for any website. Fortunately, more and more pages can be installed on Windows, macOS and Linux as progressive web applications, so if a website does not support it yet, it may soon do so. It depends on the developers.
If a website allows it to be installed in this way, we will be able to see, next to its URL, a round icon with a plus in the center. This icon will be the one that tells us that we can install this website as a PWA .
We click on this icon to install the application on our PC. We can see a confirmation window that will ask us if we really want to do it.
We accept this window, and that’s it. The web will automatically become a progressive web application, and we will be able to see it in its new interface.
There are not many options that we can configure in this type of PWA applications. But those that are available can be found by clicking on the button, shaped like three dots, that appears in the window bar.
Manage Windows and Edge PWAs
Progressive web applications are installed as programs. This means that they have their direct access on the desktop, and that they will also appear in the section to add or remove Windows programs. In this way, for example, we can anchor it to the taskbar of our computer to have it there at hand.
We can also place this PWA where we want, for example, in the start menu as a Live Tile, on the desktop, etc.
See all installed PWAs
It may be that with the passage of time we will forget all the universal apps that we have installed. Luckily, Edge allows us to control them all very easily from the browser itself. To do this, all we have to do is write ” edge: // apps / ” in the address bar, and we can see a list with all of them.
From here we will be able to control all the applications that we have installed in the browser, and configure them. For example, if we right-click on each of them we can see a small control menu.
If we choose the option ” Site permissions ” we will be able to configure all the permissions that we want that PWA to have, such as access to PC resources, Flash, JavaScript, cookies, camera, etc.
And the option ” Pin to ” is also very interesting. This will allow us to place a direct access to this web application wherever we want, either on the desktop or in the start menu. Very useful if, by mistake, we delete the accesses that we have already created.
Of course, we can also uninstall the PWA from here, but it is something that we will see in the next point.
How to uninstall progressive web apps from Windows
There are several ways to uninstall these web applications from our computer. The first one, as we have seen before, is from the PWA menu itself . We can choose the option to uninstall from here to delete this application from our PC.
Another way we have to delete these applications from our PC is to do it from the Edge panel itself. We will write edge: // apps / in the address bar, and we will click on the X that appears next to each web application to delete it. We can also choose if we want to delete all the cache data that has been generated.
And, finally, we can also do it from the section of adding or removing programs in Windows 10. To do this, we will write in the Windows search bar ” Add or remove programs “, and we will look for the PWA application, which will appear like any other program installed on the PC.
We click on “Uninstall”, like any other program, and that’s it. The application will disappear from the list of programs and will be deleted from the computer. If you want to reinstall it on your computer, you can do so freely by accessing the page again and following the steps that we have explained in this article.