[warning26]

Ehh...I do think the native app often gives a better experience than mWeb.

Don't get me wrong, a really well-written PWA with fully cached assets is often almost at a native app experience level, but that's not usually the case with most mWeb implementations.

[acdha]

For Gmail, perhaps — I think that’s one of the best cases for push notifications on the web — but YouTube basically comes down to whether you need large offline storage and search is a non-issue.

One thing I noticed about both Google and Facebook’s apps before deleting them was that in addition to using more battery, both were slower in their apps than using the web site. That was surprising but consistent & a large part of why I ditched them.

[sfink]

For me, YouTube comes down to the fact that if I use YouTube through Firefox for Android, and install the "Video Background Play Fix" addon, then I can go for a walk with my phone in my pocket and listen to things through YouTube without having it pause as soon as the screen turns off.

Well, I believe you can do that if you pay for YouTube Extortion Edition or whatever it's called. Which I used to do, until too many ads still came through and I got pissed off.

(Though note: if I got to a YouTube link through anything other than going directly to the site and searching, then it would open in the app. Which would then pause when I turned off the screen. Which was irritating. Fixed by disabling the YouTube app entirely. Life is much better now.)

[acdha]

Ah, that works in mobile Safari without an extension.

[oblio]

Does mobile Safari block ads?

[acdha]

There are content blockers, which are not as comprehensive as Firefox or Chrome extensions but also avoid the performant and privacy concerns common in that space.

[oblio]

> avoid the performance [...] concerns common in that space.

Which performance concerns?

[dontlaugh]

I also use YouTube through a browser. But besides the dark patterns and ads, it's still a worse UX.

[wizzwizz4]

So use an Invidious instance. Sure, YouTube blocks the subtitles for some of them, but if you need subtitles, it only takes a couple of minutes to find one of the new subtitles-available instance, and you're good for at least a few months.

[dontlaugh]

That's still a website. I'd much prefer a native app, just without ads and autoplay, etc.

[wizzwizz4]

What would an app give you that a website doesn't?

[dmitriid]

> Don't get me wrong, a really well-written PWA with fully cached assets is often almost at a native app experience level

And what would those be? When this question is asked, people inevitably bring up Twitter as the shining example. And it's just horrendously bad.

[warning26]

I've never seen a good major one TBH. The best PWA I've ever used, however, is this Palm OS emulator:

https://cloudpilot-emu.github.io/

[dmitriid]

I don't have a ROM to import, but it does look quite nice in what's available. Definitely much better than what major companies put out :)

[acdha]

Does Wordle count? It’s simple but it had a ton of users so it might be the most popular.

[dmitriid]

Wordle is amazing.

Also, very simple ;) I mean, UI-wise and interaction-wise