
Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section - uladzislau
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/12/google-shuts-down-the-apps-section-of-the-chrome-web-store/
======
danirod
Honestly, I'm all in for PWAs in favour of Chrome Apps. To the final user, a
PWA will work the same: an icon and a chrome-less window. However, they are
built on top of open standards, so any browser can support PWAs and provide
the same experience to their users, unlike Chrome apps, which only were
supposed to work in Chrome. I hope that in the transition, we see more and
more progressive web applications.

PWAs have replaced a few native apps on my phone and I couldn't be happier
about it. I can use Twitter, Telegram, YouTube and even read HN (via the
Premii webapp [1]) through a fullscreen interface that behaves like a native
application (no address bar, tinted notifications bar, push notifications for
Twitter and Telegram), but that nonetheless is still a browser.

Support for PWAs on Firefox for Android is around the corner. I'm a Firefox
Nightly user and the support is there: websites that have a webapp manifest
display an icon on the address bar to let you quickly "install" the
application as an icon to the homescreen. It is supposed to reach stable
channel on Firefox 58 [2].

[1]: [http://hn.premii.com/](http://hn.premii.com/) [2]:
[http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/24/firefox-58-will-
let-...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/24/firefox-58-will-let-add-
progressive-web-apps-home-screen/)

~~~
tonetheman
The problem with PWAs is they do not provide the same access as a Chrome App
(file system, sockets...) so it is not a replacement for those Apps using that
functionality.

Just another case of Chrome running in like a bull and doing one thing then
breaking it later. :(

Anyone who needs the low level functionality will end up with a native app
that use native messaging to talk to Chrome. Or just stands alone.

~~~
JepZ
Actually you are so right... And I do not understand why google doesn't seem
to solve that problem...

I mean I really like PWAs. But while they are around since a while now (about
2 years?), the pain points have not been addressed so far.

\- Privacy: There are multiple issues related to privacy here (transparent
updates, Serviceworker running in the background without the user knowing
about it), and when I see it how many serviceworkers my browser runs already I
am happy that they don't have an even deeper access to my system.

\- Ownership: Installing a PWA works like visiting a website twice. After that
you have no idea what you have (version? offline capabilities? storage?). And
if you decide to use an App for a while you are living in the constant danger
of the web service quitting.

\- Storage: While many people do not care where their data is stored
(proprietary service XYZ, AWS, Google Drive, DropBox). I would like to be able
select my storage location myself. Furthermore, I think the storage topic is
also one of the main reasons why people build electron apps, as the browser
has no robust and user friendly way of accessing the filesystem.

So here are a few suggestions which I think would help to make PWAs more
accessible.

\- Archive Format: make it possible to easily download, save and install an
PWA at any time. That way I should also be able to see a version and the
required permissions.

\- Storage interface: In my opinion the browsers should offer some storage
solution. For my last PWA I wrote a lib which could use different storage
locations like a REST API or a WebDAV. It works really well, but it is a pain
to enter your credentials every time you want to use a new app. Therefore,
your browser should offer something similar to a webdav service to save data
locally and let you configure a WebDAV service location if you want to store
you data somewhere else (e.g. Nextcloud, DropBox, etc.).

\- Improve native integration. Yes that is no easy part. I mean we already
have a bunch of native integrations, like e.g. the Notifcation API, but to be
honest I think they could be better. One thing many Apps probably would like
to have, are systemtray icons. Actually, I never used electron so far (only
cordova), but I expect them to have a bunch of plugins which could be a great
ressource for the browser devs to find out what we need here.

As permissions are already built into the browsers I haven't mentioned them
here, but with the rise of the Serviceworkers they are more important than
ever. Users should be aware of the permissions they grant a software from some
brief encounter in the web.

~~~
z3t4
You can make a virtual file system in the browser using localStorage. You can
then sync it across devices and browsers via a server.

You can upload files to the PWA using drag-n-drop or file input. You can also
send files from the PWA to the device file system.

I think it's important that Web browsers can't automatically control the
device hard drives, imagine if all web sites you visited would be able to do
rm / -rf or scan all files on your hard drive.

~~~
JepZ
Yeah, sure complete access to all files is rediculous. I think more of
something like: By default every app has its own directory and the user can
(easily) grant an app access to additional directories.

That way it can't do much damage and when you trust it, you can give it more
access.

I use the localStorage as a cache for some of the offline capabilites but as a
persistent storage it sucks as you can't easily open the stored "files" with
other programms or PWAs.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
The private directories is the way Android does it. It is a good idea,
provided you can easily allow access to other directories (as you suggested).
Unfortunately they missed that second point.

------
paxys
It seems like I'm the only one who is happy about this. What's the point of
restricting apps built using open web standards to one proprietary browser and
app store? Agreed that there was a gap in offline support which Chrome filled
at the time, but now it's time to move on and use newer and more widely
supported APIs.

~~~
chrismorgan
It is nonetheless interesting that Google have killed this off some time
before a complete replacement is ready. It reminds me (to a slightly reduced
extent) of how Google Gears was killed off completely before an alternative
for its offline support existed—it was four years before service workers fixed
that. Still, removing such things early has helped people adopt the
standardised form rather than continuing with a Google-specific thing, so as a
Firefox proponent I’m glad they did it this way each time, however little
sense it seems to make from Google’s and the user’s perspective (seriously,
they actively _removed_ offline support from Gmail—and they still haven’t
reintroduced it).

------
thatmatt
As a chrome app dev (Videostream is our app) the transition has been really
annoying. They've given us ample time to prepare for the shutdown and we've
developed a new app, from scratch, to work outside of the Chrome app world but
they (as engineers tend to do) did nothing to mitigate the disaster of a
transition. Through blogs, tweets, etc. directly pointing to the webstore, we
have years of SEO built up all pointing directly to what will now be a dead
link.

We've been pestering Google for a way to have a redirect or link on that page
that says "get the app for windows and mac in its new home over here" but they
haven't been very responsive. It's such a shitty way to treat developers who
chose your ecosystem and who you did a certain amount of convincing. They have
done this to us once before, with their wallet for digital goods, where they
shut that down and developers lost any recurring subscriptions they had on the
platform.

Basically, google is brutal if you develop on a platform for them that they
decide to axe, they really don't think of the people and companies and how
they will be affected and we now think twice before choosing to use anything
they maintain.

~~~
xangold
I use your app (thank you!). Did you consider setting up your own redirect URL
for SEO/be more resilient to 3rd party changes like this?

That seems like a permanent fix in case you decided to change platforms as
well.

------
coldtea
Hopefully this convinced the last person still gullible enough to believe on
Google's interest to maintain long term (let's say, more than a decade) any
service that's not Search, Ads, YouTube, Gmail or Android.

I wouldn't build much on GAE either...

~~~
yoodenvranx
> YouTube

Even Youtube is not safe, have a look at the Adpocalypse a few months ago or
all the wrong/incorrect demonetization of innocent videos.

~~~
MBCook
You mean that they finally started to pay attention to the ludicrous crap they
were giving money to that advertisers wanted nothing to do with?

What a surprise. It was deserved and a long time coming.

People need to learn that whatever horrible thing you put online doesn’t
automatically get you paid. Advertisers don’t want to sponsor “anything”
because it reflects poorly on them.

~~~
coldtea
> _You mean that they finally started to pay attention to the ludicrous crap
> they were giving money to that advertisers wanted nothing to do with?_

No, it means they've started promoting crap for monetizing and penalizing
things that people actually want to see.

> _Advertisers don’t want to sponsor “anything” because it reflects poorly on
> them._

Given the human scum that are advertisers, I doubt anything could reflect
poorly on them.

At best it would reflect badly on their clients -- who themselves would be
totally fine to advertise on KKK websites and snuff films if it didn't cause a
backslash.

~~~
MBCook
> No, it means they've started promoting crap for monetizing and penalizing
> things that people actually want to see.

Could you explain this part? I thought the whole issue was YT was being more
selective about the videos they monetized with ads.

> Given the human scum that are advertisers, I doubt anything could reflect
> poorly on them.

If that was true boycotting brands wouldn’t be effective. But it is VERY
effective. Ask Sean Hamburg or Dr. Laura (among many others).

~~~
coldtea
Here's a perspective on the former issue:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZakJFqdpRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZakJFqdpRY)

------
bwang29
This is really going to hurt Windows users who do not want to use .exe or
Windows 10 apps, which are both very heavy and less secure when it comes to
https or remote content loading compared to Chrome Apps (Windows UWP in this
case).

Disclaimer: It's interesting to see that our app (Polarr) is in the screenshot
(link: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-
edito...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/polarr-photo-
editor/djonnbgfieijldcieafgjcnhmpcfpmgg?hl=en))

Although ChromeOS is the smallest platform we currently support, we spent a
lot of energy on it and it is so far, still the highest rated photo chrome
app.

To put things in perspective. Between September to December, our Chrome App
user breakdown are

Windows: 48.05% ChromeOS: 43.38% macOS: 7.11% Amount of users who used the app
during this time frame: 326,459 (28.92% new).

Between Jun and September, our user breakdown are

Windows: 56.34% ChromeOS: 34.84% macOS: 7.25% Amount of users who used the app
during this time frame: 280,013 (28.52% new).

~~~
majewsky
That's the first time I've seen someone use "Disclaimer" for an ad. Usually
the ad is everything except for the disclaimer.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
To be honest, if ads were more like that comment in the "These are our
performance statistics relevant to the topic" vein, then I would be happy to
see more ads.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Yes, it is much better than the sociopathic emotional manipulation and brand
recognition techniques used on everything else nowadays.

------
therealmarv
This PWA Chrome apps is something I see as ultimate goal for all Electron
apps: Have a one point JVM like instance, share resources across all Electron
apps. So now many major Chrome Apps go Electron and I have 4-5 big Electron
Chrome instances running... what a step backward on my 8GB RAM Mac!

Personal side note: I will miss Postmann Interceptor because I can catch
cookies from a web login with the pwa app without any copy&pasting data and
continue using our REST api with this cookes. <\- not possible with Electron
Postman.

~~~
majewsky
> what a step backward on my 8GB RAM Mac!

And what a step backward on a 2GB RAM notebook that would otherwise be fine
for office and browsing tasks.

------
ISL
As an order-of-magnitude estimate, let's assume that 1 billion users use
Chrome. TFA states: "approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and
Linux actively use Chrome packaged apps."

That's 10 million active users who can't install apps that they use on their
next machine?

------
rogerwang
NW.js will continue to support running Chrome Apps:
[https://nwjs.io/blog/chrome-apps-support/](https://nwjs.io/blog/chrome-apps-
support/)

~~~
xab9
Thanks Roger, I love nwjs (still prefer it over electron), thank you for your
work!

------
Groxx
Good riddance. Hopefully they'll kill off the strange permission variations
between extensions and apps too, that's been nothing but confusing and a
plague on building anything useful.

------
spookyuser
If "Google says Progressive Web Apps are the future of app-like webpages."

Then why do the chrome website auditing tools promote progressive web apps as
the first analytic for the performance of a page. Surely only a small subset
of webpages are going to be 'app-like'.

------
martin_drapeau
PWAs are pretty cool. However when 60% of your users are on iOS, its not worth
the investment until Apple supports them. That won’t happen because it would
compete agaisnt native apps. Apple purposely blocks web apps from existing on
iOS. Installed Web apps use an old WebView with less HTML5 features than
Safari. Your web app is fast on Safari, but slow once installed.

------
seanwilson
I'm not keen on this decision.

Chrome Apps could do more than progressive web apps could do but less than
Electron apps. For some uses, now your only option is to implement an Electron
app.

Electron is much heavier, requires more trust because its a native app, makes
cross platform support harder and you're missing out on the update, payment
and discoverability features of the Chrome Web Store.

I'd prefer progressive web apps over Electron and Chrome Apps but they're not
powerful enough to replace all use cases yet. I agree Chrome Apps weren't
being widely used but I like the idea behind web apps replacing native apps
(including Electron) where suitable.

~~~
pjmlp
> For some uses, now your only option is to implement an Electron app.

No, there are plenty of options when doing native development.

~~~
seanwilson
> No, there are plenty of options when doing native development.

I was mostly meaning if you have an existing Chrome App or wanted to rely on
existing JavaScript libraries.

Electron gets a huge amount of hate on HN but I personally see the native
route as very unappealing. With less developer resources (and perhaps a
slightly worse UI; I think people really over exaggerate here), you get fairly
simple cross platform support, an update system, access to a huge JavaScript
ecosystem and your code can be shared between desktop, mobile, web and server-
side.

As a developer, I don't see the appeal of e.g. QT, Java or OS specific
implementations at all compared to the above. In my opinion, you're trading a
small increase in UX and improved system resource usage (which most users
won't notice) for a massive increase in developer resources. This is an order
of magnitude worse if you're going to do a separate implementation for each
platform as well as now you're going to need platform specific libraries,
testing frameworks, development workflows etc. for each OS.

Unless you have lots of money, it's not practical to support multiple
platforms with a 100% native experience using the minimal amount of CPU and
memory possible. If you have an existing web app, moving to Electron isn't a
big leap but that isn't the case if you want to have multiple native apps.

~~~
icebraining
Technically, you can have all those advantages with Qt/QML, since it uses
JavaScript and runs on desktop, mobile and even web. That said, I never used
it.

Another alternative would be React-Native, now that react-native-web exists...

~~~
carussell
> Technically, you can have all those advantages with Qt/QML

GTK+, too. There was a big uproar several years ago when GNOME tried to anoint
JS as the "official" language for GNOME app development. They eventually
backpedaled, and overall their story for JS today seems to be technically
decent but thoroughly undocumented.

Keep in mind, this was all before GitHub announced Atom and (what was not-yet-
then called) Electron. Imagine if the GNOME folks had used that head start to
commit themselves to the original decision, instead of reversing. They might
have managed to capture the mindshare that eventually poured in Electron,
there'd be a straightforward migration path for DOM-based UIs to go "native",
and GTK+ and GNOME apps might've been successful outside the increasingly
niche space it occupies on the Linux desktop.

~~~
pjmlp
JavaScript is one of the official GNOME languages.

[https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Gjs](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Gjs)

[https://2017.guadec.org/talks-and-
events/index.html#abstract...](https://2017.guadec.org/talks-and-
events/index.html#abstract-26-modern_javascript_in_gnome)

Electron apps across GNU/Linux users are the final nail of the desktop Linux
aspirations.

When the world is a Web VM, the kernel and everything UNIX related is
irrelevant.

------
LordKano
After the frustration I faced when google killed iGoogle, I decided that I
would never again become invested in anything from Google other than search
and email.

~~~
brazzledazzle
Is the expectation that Google maintain products even when they're not
profitable or beneficial for them? I can understand if they don't provide a
reasonable sunset date but investing yourself in any company's product is a
risk. At least with Google you'll get notice instead of a static html page one
day announcing the shuttering of the service.

~~~
thedaemon
It's also a problem with a web-centric application developers. With a
traditional software application, if the developer stops putting out updates
you still have working software. With Google's services, you no longer have
working software.

------
finchisko
I'm using only Vysor and Postman Chrome Apps. So I can probably switch to
their Electron variants. But have mixed feeling about Chrome Apps
discontinued. On one hand it's good as Chrome Apps were tied just to
Chrome/ChromeOS, while web apps should be platform agnostic. On other hand,
Chrome apps were much smaller than Electron apps, as Election runtime has not
to be included with every app (Chrome was the shared runtime). There is about
2 orders of magnitude size difference (megabytes vs. hundreds of MBs).

Wish we have system level support for Electron apps, so not every single one
has to bundle Electron libraries separately.

Edit: There is already project that is targeting that.
[https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-
diet-w...](https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-with-
electrino-c7ffdf1d6297)

~~~
okonomiyaki3000
Postman is great and they've had a standalone app for a while. It should work
well for you unless you make use of a 'hosts' file. That's right, the
standalone Postman app will just ignore it. Oh, they know about the bug.
There's been a Github issue about it for over year with plenty of "Me too!"
responses. They've done a ton of releases since then too, fixing bugs, adding
features... all of which is meaningless if you need it to respect your hosts
file settings like any normal app.

------
polock
Then...does it means they will shut down Chromebook as well? I can't
understand. Chrome apps supported the environment of not only Chrome browser
but Chrome OS as well so far. Do they have other plan for Chromebook? Weird
decision...weird.

------
jacobkg
I'm really confused about what this means for Chrome Apps on ChromeOS. We use
Electron for Windows/Mac/Linux but as far as I know Chrome Apps are still the
only game in town for ChromeOS. Is there another way to release apps for
Chrome OS?

~~~
icebraining
"All types of Chrome apps will remain supported and maintained on Chrome OS
for the foreseeable future. Additional enhancements to the Chrome apps
platform will apply only to Chrome OS devices, including kiosks. Developers
can continue to build Chrome apps (or Android apps) for Chrome OS."

[https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-
web.ht...](https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html)

~~~
josteink
So basically Google says they'll maintain and further develop this technology,
so it can't be _bad_ per se.

They will however now reduce the amount of platforms it can run on to a
fraction of what it was... But for what reason? (Since it's clearly an OK
technology in the eyes of ChromeOS)

This only shows yet again to never _rely_ on a Google-based platform for your
application or service.

~~~
jessaustin
_...platforms it can run on to a fraction of what it was..._

The plan, of course, is that _everyone_ will be on ChromeOS.

------
dmitriid
> Google said that "approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac and Linux
> actively use Chrome packaged apps."

Well, if you delegate discovery of said apps to a small icon no one can see on
screen, then no surprise.

------
PuffinBlue
Great.

Anyone have any suggestions for a replacement for Authy?

It's a 2FA Chrome App that syncs your 2FA tokens across devices.

They have a 'desktop app' now available for Mac and Windows, but of course
nothing for Linux (surprise surprise).

So any equivalent that will work cross platform and sync too?

~~~
LeoPanthera
If your tokens synchronize across multiple devices don't they stop being a
legitimate "factor"?

~~~
nindalf
I completely agree with this, but I would prefer if there was a mechanism to
keep offline backups. Currently if I lose my phone I am frozen out of my
accounts. 1-time codes do exist but they have issues - either they're very
easily accessible in the form of a printed paper or they're very difficult to
access like an encrypted backup in the cloud.

I don't have a good solution to this problem - I am mugged while traveling and
I lose my phone and wallet. If anyone could share how they tackle this problem
I'd be grateful.

~~~
PuffinBlue
What is 2FA? It's 'something you have'. It's not 'one single thing on one
device only'. It's just 'something you have'.

'Something you have' relies on physical security, so if you have the same
physical security for both your laptop and phone, there's no reduction by
having a 2FA token on each device.

~~~
smt88
That's only true if there's a physical barrier to propagating your tokens to
new devices.

The concern is that Authy changes the second factor from physical security
back to something cloud-based and hackable.

I don't know if that's legit because I don't know how Authy works.

~~~
ensignavenger
From reading the Authy docs, it sounds like all your Authy data is encrypted
before leaving the device, so if the encryption works, it should be pretty
secure. You can also turn off the multi-device support and backup, if you
don't want those features. But tome, the risk of losing my single device and
being locked out of my accounts is too high without it. I just wish Authy was
open source so it could get more security review.

------
bane
What's the future for Chrome Remote Desktop?

~~~
pgrote
They are deprecating the app and going to a web application.

There is also a companion extension, but I am unsure what purpose it serves.

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uVCvle...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uVCvlergXOE;context-
place=topicsearchin/chrome/apps)

[https://remotedesktop.google.com/](https://remotedesktop.google.com/)

~~~
dragonwriter
Extensions can use some APIs that are not available to web apps (but not all
of the ones that Chrome Apps could use), and Web App + Extension is one of the
Google recommended migration paths for Chrome Apps that use functionality
beyond that available to pure web apps.

------
andreascmj
Will you still be able to manually add webpages as apps to run them in
separate windows? It's so nice to run youtube in a window without url-bar or
tabs-

------
sohkamyung
I'm use the Chrome App version of Pocket to download and read my Pocket
articles offline on Windows 10. Any suggestions for a replacement?

I'm currently trying Poki [1] but I find it's offline reading features too
limited for my tastes.

Pocket hints they may produce a Windows 10 app but that's a vague promise at
the moment.

[1] [https://pokiapp.com/](https://pokiapp.com/)

------
addicted
I hate that Google axes features because only 1% of users are using them.

1% of Chrome’s users are millions of users.

------
EamonnMR
I only ever used one-the SSH client. It was far nicer than PUTTY for those
occasions where I needed to SSH from windows. Maybe I'll just do it from
Termux on my phone from now on.

~~~
jrimbault
You could also install the WSL and a nice terminal emulator of your choice.
Though if you need to SSH from a Windows box only on rare occasions, the phone
might be enough.

------
z3t4
Don't forget about application mode in Chrome: Menu > Tools > Add to desktop.
It will then run the web site "chrome-less" without address bar etc.

------
mankash666
Pity. The underlying Nacl/PNacl technology is eons ahead of wasm, with better,
if not equivalent security. It even had simd support!

------
sofaofthedamned
What's going to happen to the SSH app? It was awesome for when I didn't have
access to a full-fat client.

~~~
brandonhorst
It's going away for non-ChromeOS systems.

------
assafmo
So... anyone knows a good VideoStream replacement?

~~~
thatmatt
Videostream is a good Videostream replacement. New version is not a Chrome
App, beta at [https://getvideostream.com/](https://getvideostream.com/) ;)

~~~
assafmo
Thanks! I'll wait for the linux version

