.png "Cohost PLUS!")
It's weird to me that Cohost doesn't seem to have a dedicated Android app yet when the mobile browser version already functions in a very app-like manner. You could make a home screen icon for the Cohost homepage and get almost the exact same function as a dedicated app might provide. I suppose that also means that the development of a proper app can be safely deprioritised, but its complete nonexistence is strange all the same.
yeah and while android has that option to "add to home screen" a webpage to "turn it into an app", i immediately found this has a big annoying problem with how the back button works compared to what you'd expect from an app
(obviously aside from no integration with system notifications; whether you'd want this is another matter of course)
my bigger annoyance is if you click on an image and it makes the image fullscreen in a lightbox, in any other app if you press the back button it'd go back to the timeline and hide the lightbox again. but because it's a browser, pressing back just goes back a page, which in this case means its closes the entire browser and goes back to your home screen (of if you were on page 2 of the timeline you go back to page 1)
i assume its because opening a lightbox or any other popover or modal does not add an entry on top of the browser history, which you wouldn't really want for regular browser use, but for an app the expected user experience is that every "change in view" goes on the stack, and the back button goes backwards through every change in view
small things like this really drive home that, making a responsive website's goal is to make a website work well on mobile form factor devices, but it does not automatically result in an app
I see a new chost on my timeline every day where someone is baffled by nearly every major, fundamental, conscious decision that was made while designing Cohost, and it drives me insane because those are the exact same reasons I love being here.
Cohost is deliberately a PWA. That is the app. Ask yourself why you think there should be a native app. What would you gain? Would there actually be anything different or would it be the same website but... uhh, appier somehow, I guess?
There are other PWAs. There are A LOT of PWAs. This might be the first one you've ever seen. You would not believe how many "native apps" are literally websites in a WebView and could have been a PWA but deliberately don't support working as one.
Any website can have system notifications. Cohost deliberately does not support notifications as a conscious design choice because it's not like other social media platforms. There are also no Like or Share counters and you can turn off the number for Notifications.
The back button behaving unexpectedly might be a legitimate concern. Staff is trying to make a PWA work in 2023 (despite the overwhelming dying-on-this-hill trend towards everything needing to be an app) and there have already been massive improvements to the user experience. If something isn't working how you'd expect it, see if it's reported in Cohost Support (open the menu and tap "help / report a bug"). If it is, there's a button to report you have this problem too, and if there isn't, you can start a new topic. Staff will actually see it there and be able to prioritize working on it.
