Install as an app

Turn on Install as an app in a site's settings and anyone who opens it can put it on their home screen or dock. It opens in its own window, without the browser around it, like any other app.

What you do

Nothing to the site itself. Every site already has an address of its own, which is what an installed app is, so there is no build step and nothing to add to the file. It is on every plan.

Your visitors get a small Install app button in the bottom-left corner, because most people do not know a website can be installed and the browsers that allow it hide it in a menu. Where the browser has its own install prompt (Chrome, Edge, Samsung Internet), the button opens it. On an iPhone or iPad, and in Safari on a Mac, it says the one step to take: Share, then Add to Home Screen, or File, then Add to Dock. Closing the button hides it for 30 days.

What it does

• It keeps what people save. Anything the site keeps in the browser, such as a habit tracker's ticks or a checklist's progress, stays on that device, in the app, between visits.
• It works offline with the last version that device opened. Online, it always asks for the live version first, so publishing a new one is never hidden behind a cache.
• Its icon is the site's initial on a colour taken from its address, and its name is the site's title. A site that brings its own manifest or theme colour keeps them.
• Who can open it does not change. A Password, Invited or Team site still asks at the door, installed or not.

Your own button

With the setting on, the page has window.solta.app, for a site that would rather offer installing in its own words:

if (solta.app.canInstall) {
  button.hidden = false;
  button.onclick = () => solta.app.install();
}
window.addEventListener("solta:installable", () => (button.hidden = false));

What it does not do

A Private site opens only inside Solta, and an app has to open at its own address, so a Private site installs only on a device one of its people chose: Open on this device. It is not on a domain of yours that serves several sites by path, where they would all be one app. Turning the setting off removes the button and the offline copy the next time each device opens the site; an app someone already installed stays on their device until they remove it, and opens the site as it is now.

Who can open a site, installed or not.