Progressive Web Apps are a hybrid of native and web apps and work on any device and any browser. You know, like the way you can pin a browser shortcut on your phone’s home screen? Like that, but, in place of it acting like the web page that it is, it actually acts like a mobile app, if there was one.
This is exactly what you can expect to get if you take the new Snapchat Progressive Web App, available on the Windows Store for free, for a spin.
The new Snapchat PWA is built off the web version of Snapchat, which is only a few months old and, as can be expected of anything touching on the web from Microsoft, it is powered by Microsoft Edge. For those not in the know, not only is Edge Microsoft’s browser (its Internet Explorer replacement), it is powered by Chromium, the open-source web browser project developed and maintained by Google. Heck, yours truly is typing this from that Edge.
Snapchat for Web, as the web version of Snapchat is known as, works only on Chrome, the Chromium project’s biggest poster child so it is not surprising that another Chromium-based would be an obvious pick for the web app.
As a result of the Snapchat PWA working via Edge, it gets treated as a native app on Windows machines and users can get their much-needed Snapchat icon in the Start Menu and have the same show up when there are notifications.
The Snapchat PWA is accessible via the Windows Store on machines running either Windows 10 or Windows 11.
