{"id":8142,"date":"2026-01-02T07:55:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T12:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/?p=8142"},"modified":"2026-01-02T07:55:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T12:55:23","slug":"a-first-look-at-the-web-install-api","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/a-first-look-at-the-web-install-api\/","title":{"rendered":"A first look at the Web Install API"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brucelawson.co.uk\/2025\/a-first-look-at-the-web-install-api\/\">Bruce Lawson<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>I was excited to see that the proposed new\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.windows.com\/msedgedev\/2025\/11\/24\/the-web-install-api-is-ready-for-testing\/\">Web Install API has entered Origin Trial<\/a>\u00a0in Chromium. It kind of works in Chromium Canary, but is most complete in Microsoft Edge beta [&#8230;] The reason I was excited is because I read the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/MicrosoftEdge\/MSEdgeExplainers\/blob\/main\/WebInstall\/explainer.md\">Web install API explainer<\/a>\u00a0when it was announced a few months ago:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Web Install API provides a way to democratise and decentralise web application acquisition, by enabling \u201cdo-it-yourself\u201d end users and developers to have control over the application discovery and distribution process. It provides the tools needed to allow a web site to install a web app.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pwastore.io\/web-install-api\">a pretty straightforward explainer site<\/a>. Basically still PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) except you can offer a button-click to install them. There <em>just might<\/em> be proper cross-browser interest, but it sounds like Safari will be the hardest to get on board. But to be fair, they have <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/104996\">their own &#8220;Add to Dock&#8221; thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bruce Lawson: I was excited to see that the proposed new\u00a0Web Install API has entered Origin Trial\u00a0in Chromium. It kind of works in Chromium Canary, but is most complete in Microsoft Edge beta [&#8230;] The reason I was excited is because I read the\u00a0Web install API explainer\u00a0when it was announced a few months ago: The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sig_custom_text":"","sig_image_type":"featured-image","sig_custom_image":0,"sig_is_disabled":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[20,433],"class_list":["post-8142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-beat","tag-pwa","tag-web-install-api"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/pexels-photo-20701036.jpeg?fit=1880%2C1254&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8144,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8142\/revisions\/8144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}