Mozilla has announced that Firefox users can now use progressive web apps (PWAs). However, the feature is currently only supported on Windows.
PWAs can be useful for accessing your favorite websites quickly. It can also be handy for services like Spotify, Discord, where you may want to access the page quickly to control your music, or to chat with your friends. The feature has been available in Chrome and other browsers for a long time.
The option to enable PWAs is available in Firefox's Settings Labs. To activate it, head to about:preferences#experimental. Toggle the option that says "Add sites to your taskbar." You will need to restart Firefox for the change to take effect.
Note: Alternatively, you can also enable the feature from about:config with the following flag: browser.taskbarTabs.enabled
Once you have enabled the option, open any website, and you should see a new icon in the Address Bar. It looks like a box with a downwards arrow. Mouse over it, and you should see a tooltip that says "Add to taskbar." Click on the button to pin the current web page to your taskbar.
Note: The tooltip seems to display some placeholder text. Ignore it.
The icon will appear on the taskbar, and you may notice that the website's tab has been moved out of the previous window. The progressive web app version of the web page will look similar to the normal version, but Firefox itself may look different. It doesn't display the tab bar, the menu, etc., however it still has an address bar.
It does not support private browsing. PWAs don't support containers. The PWA interface moves the minimize, maximize, and close buttons to the address bar, which in turn pushes the add-ons, pinned toolbar items, and even the menu button a little to the left. This streamlined window (seen below) looks a little odd.
On the plus side, web apps in Firefox offer all of the browser's protections. Even the add-ons work as normal.
While you can unpin PWAs from the taskbar, they may persist. i.e. They may show up in the Start Menu, and even has an option to uninstall the PWA. But you can't uninstall them, that's because they are just shortcuts. Head to this folder to view your pinned web apps.
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Firefox Web Apps
You can simply delete any unwanted shortcuts from this folder.
Follow the official discussion about PWAs in Firefox on Mozilla Connect. The PWA feature is not available for Linux and macOS yet.
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