Progressive Web Apps have been a big deal lately. Google, Microsoft, and others have been investing quite a lot into PWAs over the last year or so, and they are actually quite well integrated on most modern web browsers nowadays. Google and Microsoft are now working together to take OS-support for PWAs to the next level.

When you install a PWA on Chrome or the new Microsoft Edge browser, you have to remove them through the browsers, instead of the OS. So that means these apps don’t actually show up on the Windows 10 apps list, for example. Microsoft and Google are working to address this problem.

As first spotted by Chrome Story, a bug report from April of this year outlined how PWAs should be uninstallable the same way as a real, native Windows app. Following the bug report, a couple of Microsoft and Google engineers discussed the problem publicly, stating how the solution could be implemented.

And now, it seems like a Microsoft engineer has come forward with an implementation for the solution. The implementation is currently under review on Chromium Gerrit, and if it gets approved, it could soon make its way to Google Chrome, as well as the new Microsoft Edge browser. “The change allows installed Web Apps on Windows to be uninstalled from the ‘Uninstall or change a program’ Control Panel,” the engineer noted. It is not clear if PWAs will appear in the modern Settings app’s Apps & Features section on Windows 10, though.

The change here is not necessarily a big one, but it just goes to show how Microsoft and Google working together on Chromium could make both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge better, at least on Windows.

Tagged with Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, PWAs