Promote the mobile capabilities of Discourse

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AI-generated summary

davy highlights that many average users are unaware of Discourse’s mobile capabilities — namely its mobile app (often criticized as a “web view” but useful for bundling communities) and its Progressive Web App (PWA), which functions as a “bookmark on steroids” but lacks push notifications on iOS. Both features are under-promoted: users rarely discover them unless they already know Discourse exists and actively search for it in app stores — often mistaking it for Discord or similar apps. Even the PWA’s potential is overlooked due to low awareness of what PWAs are or how to install them. davy suggests that promoting these features — especially to moderators and admins — would benefit Discourse-based communities by improving user engagement and retention. The post calls for better awareness campaigns and support to help users discover and leverage these mobile-friendly tools.

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Average users have to try hard to find out that Discourse offers two neat things: PWA and the mobile app.

Ok the app is rather basic and many seem to complain that it’s “just a web view” and that arguably push notifications with the relevant content would make it way more useful. But it’s already nice to have the communities bundled in one place and there’s potential for more.

But to even find out that there’s such a thing, people have to know what exactly Discourse is, know that their favorite community is based on it and then have to have the idea to search their app store for it and manage to install Discourse Hub instead of Discord or something else.

For those who like a dedicated ”app” for a community and/or don’t see enough value in the app (or don’t even know about it) there’s the PWA which is working great at least as a bookmark on steroids. At least for iOS there seems to be no push notification support yet (ok it took Apple until last year to add it) but maybe it’s in the pipeline?

We have a similar problem here like with the app. Many users seem not to know that there’s even such a thing as a PWA, what it could do and how to get started.

So, what do you think? Wouldn’t it in the favor of the communities relying on Discourse to offer support in promoting these features? Maybe also to spread the awareness to the mods and admins that there’s such a thing?

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