Floatplane on iOS

[Jet_ski]

There is an elegant solution to Floatplane's iOS troubles that is very straightforward. And you could give the platform full functionality without giving Apple a 30% cut or even deal with their App Store people. I think it should be implement until LMG or Floatplane become large enough for Apple to negotiate with. So here's how it works:

• In iOS you can pin websites to the Home Screen through Safari. It creates an independent Safari window that is separate from the main Safari app. And customization is completely unrestricted from a functionality perspective.
• When/if LMG/Floatplane smooth things out with Apple, the work that has gone into making this won't be lost. Many apps on the iOS are essentially a web app and nothing is iOS native. People don't even realize it, for example the Yahoo Finance app.
• The work is to optimize Floatplane for Safari or create a Safari-friendly UI that is shown only to mobile Safari users.

Here is how you can pin a website to the Home Screen in iOS:

   

 

You can see that the page is full screen, devoid of Safari's interface, FaceID works and basically you can't distinguish it from a regular app here:

  

 

Currently, Floatplane.com is not optimized for Safari. So if you pin it to your Home Screen, it will show a browser tab and it's not even full screen. But it does't have to be like this:

 

 

 

You can see launching LTT.com from the pin looks a lot like an app already. That's because Invision, which the forum is based on, is fairly optimized for iOS. But the optimization can go a lot further. Safari allows websites to push notifications if the user gives it permission, a lot of sites have a popup that ask. If you noticed the Twitter icon, thats not the official iOS app. Thats just Twitter.com pinned to my Home Screen. It's actually much more optimized for Safari than even the LTT/Invision forum:

 

Anyway. Personally I think pinning a website is as simple as installing an app from the App Store. Pinning takes 3 steps (going to the site, tapping Share, tapping Add to Home Screen) and installing an app also takes 3 steps (searching the app in the App Store, tapping install, FaceID/TouchID identification). While Floatplane would need to spend a lot of time optimizing the site for Safari to look good, you won't have to deal with App Store at all. Also, if the site is optimized well enough, this method should work on iPadOS and maybe even WatchOS!!!

[Jet_ski]

46 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

devs: we spend so much time to make a dedicated app because the UI will bring everything together, and the direct utilisation of the hardware would allow the phone to separate resources from browsers in normal service, so that users would feel more at home while using our services

 

this proposal: chuck it all out and pin webapp to home screen

 

(i mean i use youtube on a browser on my phone (not the app), so i can't entirely fault that thinking)

I’m not advocating this as a general solution though; it’s just that if the business model can’t support the App Store fee, then this is a better option than having an official app that has no functionality. The Floatplane iOS situation was discussed in the WAN show last night and apparently Apple’s requirements to avoid the 30% fee are very stringent. For instance users may not be able to manage subscriptions or payments in the app, they may not sign up to other creators, the chat and comments functionality aren’t allowed unless Floatplane can prove they have enough moderators, users may not see thumbnails from creators they aren’t subscribed to, and so on. This limits the app a lot.
 

I understand why Apple believes they deserve a 30% cut since being on the App Store gives apps a lot of exposure and discoverability that can lead to exponential growth. But if the 30% cut is too much for a business like Floatplane which acquires users through other channels, then this is really the best option to give users full functionality.

 

I think you’d be surprised how many apps are just a hidden browser window that’s tied to a webpage.

[TetraSky]

They would need something like a banner at the top that says how to do this when it detects an iOS device and a "never show again" option to dismiss it once that's done.

Because, while it seems simple enough, a lot of people have the mentality of "app good, website bad" and will automatically default to looking for an app even if the website works perfectly fine by itself. (We've seen plenty of such people here asking why there isn't a forum app, when the website works more than just fine on mobile)