The state of PWAs (progressive web apps) in 2020/2021

If you're following the PWA (progressive web app) ecosystem, you're probably aware of Maximiliano Firtman's excellent work. Maximiliano writes, builds and shares many great resources about PWAs, developing offline-first and web apps in general.

PWAs were a hot topic a few years ago. The moment the service worker specification was released, every site needed to ship with one. Everything needed to be offline-first. We were all excited, and nobody could resist jumping on this new technology. I had to rebuild my blog, make it a progressive web app and ride the cool-kids wave, too! 🏄‍♂️

Fast-forwarding to today, it feels like that the PWA buzz disappeared and it seems like PWAs never took off. They didn't become mainstream and they didn't replace native mobile apps.

I primarily build "normal" websites, and I admit that I lost interest in the whole offline-first and progressive web app topic. Not every website has to work offline and I also removed the service worker from most sites I maintain.

But what's the status of progressive web apps today? In his article Progressive Web Apps in 2021, Maximiliano shares many details about PWA technology in 2020/2021. He includes technical changes and new technologies, usage statistics and explains the great divide of browsers on PWAs (Apple vs Google). If you're like me and didn't watch the space closely for a few years, this article is 100% worth catching up with the PWA ecosystem!