CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptjqueryandroid
DisgruntledGoat
DisgruntledGoat

Reputation: 72530

Android equivalent of the iPhone's "Add to Home Screen"?

I am developing a mobile web app. Currently I have this snippet of jQuery code which checks if the app is running full screen:

if ( !window.navigator.standalone )
{
    $('#content').before( '<div class="notice">To enjoy the mobile experience to its fullest, tap the arrow button on the toolbar below, choose <b>Add to Home Screen</b>, then launch it from there.</div>' );
}

I have a few questions:

  1. Does window.navigator.standalone work on Android phones?
  2. What is the process for a user to add a mobile web app to their home screen? I tried looking for browser screenshots but didn't find any reliable sources.
  3. Is there an equivalent to iPhone's "apple-touch-icon" link element? Found the answer to this here.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 8191

Answers (2)

mike nelson
mike nelson

Reputation: 22136

window.navigator.standalone is not supported on Chrome or Android browser.

It appears that a user now can manually add to home screen similar to iOS, but only in Chrome browser, not Android native browser. So this will only work for newer Android phones.

However, at this time there is no way to detect if it is running in standalone.

See Chrome reference: https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/installtohomescreen

Upvotes: 1

Saurabh Pareek
Saurabh Pareek

Reputation: 7134

A web application can't run directly on android home screen. for that it need some other customized home screen. right now there are two companies who are working to provide a platform from android to run web application standalone.

  • Obigo WRT
  • Opera

where you can make your web application as a widget and then it will run in that runtime. currently obigo have provided the customized home screen. where opera will run web widget within an application.

Upvotes: 4

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