Glossary
What is Progressive Web App (PWA)?
A Progressive Web App is a website built with capabilities — offline functionality, home-screen installation, push notifications — that let it behave like a native mobile app, while still running through a standard web browser rather than an app-store install.
The core enabling technology is a service worker, a background script the browser runs separately from the page itself, which can cache assets for offline use and intercept network requests to serve cached content when connectivity is poor or absent. A web app manifest file then defines how the app appears if a user adds it to their home screen — icon, name, launch behavior — without going through an app store.
The main advantage over a native app is distribution friction: no app-store review process, no separate codebase per platform, and updates ship instantly to every user on their next visit rather than waiting on app-store approval and user-initiated updates.
The honest tradeoff is access to certain native-only device APIs and discoverability — some users still expect to find an app in an app store rather than through a browser, and certain hardware integrations remain more mature or exclusive to native app frameworks. A PWA is the right call when the core need is reach and update speed across many devices without app-store friction; a native build is the right call when deep device integration or app-store discoverability specifically matters to the product.