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Why are there so many apps that could be websites? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by sir_pronoun@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Seriously. I don't want to install something on my phone when the dev is just using a WebView, if that's what it's called. When the app is basically just a website with the browser hidden.

What's the reason for that? To attach the customer? To sell the app for money? Is there more ad revenue that way? Do you reach more people?

(Are there any good reasons for it, too? Security, maybe?)

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[-] doc@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago

Firefox Focus on Android sounds right up your alley.

[-] indigomirage@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I have it and use it. It's great (works for most sites). My point is actually the opposite - there are certain sites/services that become very unpleasant to use if you have to log in everytime you open the browser.

The advantage of apps is that for those particular services you don't have to reauthenticate each time you open them (the trade off being insecurity.

Using websites would be great if I could have a separate (isolated) instance per site. That way I could kill browse history for general browsing.

(The absolute worst are the apps that hop out to the browser (especially when they hard code Chrome, which I avoid where possible on Android.))

On the PC (by way of example), edge and chrome have web applications that are handy (think YouTube and YouTube music) but.... they share credentials! I keep a separate login for YT vs YTM (because google completely misunderstood the reason people keep videos separate from music when they killed the excellent Google Play Music). So... When I log into one, flips the default login for the other. Now, if they were separate apps, like on Android, the sessions are separated - as they ought to be!

I will say that Duck Duck Go's App Tracking protection is a fantastic way to tackle the way apps 'phone home' so much, however, since it leverages a full tunnel (yet local) VPN technique, you have to disable it if you want to connect to another VPN service.

(Bottom line - website based services are great, but, for goodness sake, I wish one had the option to persist various sites, but in isolation.)

this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024

460 points (97.3% liked)

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