Add To Home Screen (iOS, iPadOS) adds a popup for users on iOS devices. This popup is dismissible and will not show up if you are viewing a Discourse forum via PWA.
How long should the popup wait before appearing? (in milliseconds)
Translation
Default
pwa_text
Install %{siteTitle} on your iOS device. Tap share and then Add to Home Screen.
This theme includes two settings, one for the text displayed, and one for a timer to decide how long to wait until the popup appears. These settings come with their defaults set.
This popup will only appear for iOS users on an iPhone or an iPad who are not using PWA to view a Discourse forum. It will not appear again if a user clicks the x icon.
On iPad, this banner is not great. The banner appears at the bottom of the screen, but the share button is at the top. I see thereâs a little up arrow , as if to indicate âhey, the buttonâs up in the headerâ but I doubt that will be enough. (Have yâall done user testing on this? Have you seen it work for non-expert iPad users?)
It also doesnât help that weâre asking the user to âtap share,â but the button isnât visibly called âshare.â Itâs a little box with an arrow.
Iâd love it if Discourse did something more like this.
Now, the flyout is kinda fragile (what if the button moves?), but I think itâs also OK if the button isnât exactly where the flyout points, as long as itâs in roughly the right place.
Historically, it was also perilous that the button might look different from one version of iOS to the next. But the share button hasnât changed shape since iOS 7, and thereâs no particular reason to think it will change in iOS 17, so I think an approach like this would work on iPad, with a little flyout pointing toward where the Share button probably is in the header bar.
I could see the benefit of showing this flyout at the top of the page when an ipad is being used.
To be quit frank, the reason we didnât include that icon in this version of the component is that this icon is only available in Font-Awesome 6, and Discourse does not currently support that version yet.
This sort of desire is exactly why I set this text to be editable by an admin. Each person may have a different take on what this popup should say, so feel free to edit to your liking.
Im not sure I follow your question. I would venture if they are on the forum already, the reason behind installing it on their iOS device would be self evident.
My point is that Apple users are only familiar with installing apps via the App Store. Very few will understand what a pwa is. Fewer still will know the potential benefit of installation.
Putting browser notifications behind A2HS is a great move on apples part. It completely solves the early issues with notifications on desktop.
How do we let users know whatâs in it for them beyond another icon on their Home Screen?
I completely (but I hope politely) disagree. I run a Discourse forum and have it and others added to the Home Screen. I only thought about doing that after discussions here, and havenât seen any benefits (the notifications donât work) so have continued to use the Hub app.
My feedback has been specifically from clients, after mentioning that the PWA was a necessary step to enable notifications.
Itâs going to vary between communities, but in the era of âask app not to trackâ users arenât as likely to blindly follow instructions without some perceived benefit. Telling a user how to install the PWA without explaining why definitely buries the lede.
I had this issue with a couple of my self-hosted instances and modifying the push notification time window mins to 0 fixed it for me and most of my users. As a side-effect it also makes the behavior closer to how the Hub app notifications work for timing.
Nice component! I like how itâs implemented close to where the share buttons are. Agree that we should integrate this into core and the android banner.
I have an old unimplemented mockup from a while ago that might address some thoughts mentioned here:
The idea with the text here was to have some sort of clear âwhatâs in it for meâ â and literally show the site logo in an app-like way to make it a little clearer what this is all about.
That was mocked up for Android, which makes things easier because you can include a button that directly adds the PWA to your device.
Unfortunately iOS still requires you to go through their share sheet to get to this action⌠but I think we can have a button that triggers the share options? (we already do this for clicking the share icon on posts in iOSâŚ)
Not on iOS. You can open a share sheet with navigator.share(), but it doesnât have the âAdd to Home Screenâ button on it. To A2HS, the user has to manually click the little share button; hence the need for something like this.
, as if to indicate âhey, the buttonâs up in the headerâ but I doubt that will be enough. (Have yâall done user testing on this? Have you seen it work for non-expert iPad users?)
was to have some sort of clear âwhatâs in it for meâ â and literally show the site logo in an app-like way to make it a little clearer what this is all about.