But after some research, i found a way around the add to home mess. We can add a install button directly to the app by doing the following:
Download the app to your own phone by adding to home screen as usual, you must use chrome browser for this( i will let you why )
Once downloaded, you need to download a app sharing app, like Share-it, or App Sharer etc. Use the app to share the application to another phone, your glide app will show-up as an apk file.
Once you have that apk file on your other device. Just upload it to any file upload site and create a link to it, which you will use to put as a button in glide app as open link or just share the link directly with users. ( i put as the 1st screen users see, all other tabs are hidden until user clicks Install, on clicking install cell is incremented by 1 and this values is used to unlock the other tabs.
On opening the link users can download the apk and get a prompt to install or add to home screen. (reason for using chrome is, most users have chrome installed, if not they will be prompted to download chrome to run the app)
More need to worry about users unable to see the add to home screen mess. Not sure if anyone else thought or tried it, but it works 100%.
IOS users should also be able to use Share-it app and do the same.
@Amal
I like your approach of adding a “Install app” button in the app itself.
Question about 4.
It seems like Safari has a 92% market on iPhones over the past 12 months. Would you then ask users what OS they are using, and based on their answer make different “download app” buttons visible?
PS. I couldn’t find the data on Statista, I found statistics instead on Netmarketshare (no idea if the data is reliable).
I imagine your Android solution would require also having to convince all users to enable side loading on their device, or does an APK from a PWA react differently than an APK from a full fledged app?
i tried these with a couple to users, and they were able to install it without any issues. what you are referring to is, normally in apk file install, users are asked to enable unknown sources from setting before installing. This apk did not trigger that prompt, at least in the environment i tested.
Uploading to google drive makes the user see another screen with download button, but if you still prefer that then :
Use this to paste your drive link and get user to direct download no extra screen at all
An old thank you trick …
If you use an Android mobile device to create your APK, you can add yourself to your contacts and share the APK with yourselves. Ready!
They will already have the APK on their devices.
I have gone through all of these options, before coming up with this. Once you try to upload your link, it just spins around in circles and doesn’t do anything. I contacted their support and they were clueless.
Appmaker and PWAbuulder are both fails. I have not tried bubble wrap as it a little far feteched for me
