Yes, the standard chrome install popup works just fine, but as usual, it’s a one and done thing. Once you dismiss the standard chrome popup, then you can never trigger it again unless you clear cache and permissions for that site. It’s Glide’s version of the popup that has never worked, whether it pops up automatically or if you use the option in the side menu. I’ve even seen the standard popup show up on top of the glide popup. Well, that’s weird, because you have to dismiss the standard popup to get to the glide popup or even fully use the app, and at that point, there is no possible way that glide can ever trigger the install event again…especially on chrome/android. It’s a feature that just doesn’t make sense to me. I’m sure safari/ios works differently, but this just makes no sense as to how this could ever work on android.
I don’t understand how this is an OS failure, unless using Android in general is the failure. Unless I’m completely misunderstanding something, it seems to me that it’s documented that a website can not trigger the install procedure at will, unless I’m not understanding something or I misread something. As I understand it, at most, glide can capture the beforeinstallprompt event and call it at a later time, but it’s still a one and done thing. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I’m getting out of what I’ve read. I doesn’t seem like glide is even capturing the beforeinstallprompt event because it fires immediately when the app is opened for the first time. To fully use or explore the app without installing it, you have to dismiss that standard popup. That’s why I think the new install option doesn’t work. The event has already been dismissed, before you can even access or see the new install button, and can’t be triggered again.
As outlined here, you can listen for the beforeinstallprompt event, save it, and trigger it at a llater time. But if a user dismisses the standard chrome installation popup, then the beforeinstallprompt event will never be called again.
I’m happy to be proven wrong, or at least see it working on an android device. But in my experience, I’ve never seen the standard installation popup show after being dismissed. At that point, you have to open the browser menu and install the app that way.
This is what happens when both the standard chrome popup as well as glide’s version of the popup are both displayed at the same time. Notice how the standard popup is overlaid on top of Glide’s install popup.
At this point, I could install from the standard popup, but if I were to dismiss it to get to the glide popup, then the glide install button is unresponsive because I already dismissed the install event and it can’t be triggered again from the website. This install button just doesn’t do anything.
I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense to me. It would be awesome if it worked correctly, but it doesn’t for me at least. Like I said, unless someone can show me that it works as intended on Android, then I’m happy to be wrong, but I’d also like to know if I need to be on a specific Chrome version or Android OS version for this feature to work. I’m using Chrome 105 and Android 11. Or do I need to change some flags in my chrome browser to make this work? I’ve seen a handful of reports about this issue now, and I feel like it’s much more widespread and causing a lot of confusion for android users.
