Google is planning on hiding the status bar in PWAs (aka Progressive Web Apps). We all know Tech Companies like Google work on improving and changing their features every now and then. Previously, very recently it changed one of its features that was enabling Chrome PWAs to be uninstalled from settings or control panel which was previously impossible. It now is coming into news that Google is planning on whether or not they should hide their status bar in PWAs but that development is under testing and no decision (that's to rolled out it as a default option) has been taken as of yet.
In case you do not know what a status bar on PWAs is. Worry not! We have got you covered on that information. A link destination appears at the bottom in gray while you are surfing a web page in the web browser. The status bar is a horizontal box which is present at the bottom of your screen and shows which program is running and which website is running before clicking on the link. That is the purpose of status bar and it is very important.
In order to see how this status bar area will look, once removed, all you have to do is follow these steps.
Firstly, you will have to launch your latest version of Chrome Canary web browser and visit chrome://flags from address bar. On the page visited search for Desktop PWAs Remove Status Bar, or if this appears a bit hard, simply paste this in the address bar chrome://flags/#enable-desktop-pwas-remove-status-bar. Click on the blue box with drop down menu, the option set mostly will be at “Default” change it to “Enabled” and then restart the Chrome Canary browser.
Open Chrome again and install any PWA, for example you can go to https://remotedesktop.google.com/ and install it from the address bar by clicking the circled-plus icon right next to Bookmark (star icon). Now after opening the PWA you won't be able to notice the status bar, either during the loading or by hovering mouse/pointer over the links.
What needs to be noticed is that under the option “Desktop PWAs Remove Status Bar” there is a flag description notifying that "Hides the status bar popup in Desktop PWA app Windows, Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS" affected by this change. This means that only the mentioned devices and operating systems have the ability for enabling the option for status bar removal. Android and iOS will show status bar unless Google enables the option on it too.
We cannot say whether the public is happy about this change or not considering no public survey has been taken as of yet, but we are also not sure if this change is here to stay as it is still under testing conditions. Whatever the taken decision will be we are sure would be according to the public demand because the Tech Giant keeps its user preference as a top priority.
Read next: Google Limits Access To Chrome API For Third Party Browsers And Developers Relying On Chromium
In case you do not know what a status bar on PWAs is. Worry not! We have got you covered on that information. A link destination appears at the bottom in gray while you are surfing a web page in the web browser. The status bar is a horizontal box which is present at the bottom of your screen and shows which program is running and which website is running before clicking on the link. That is the purpose of status bar and it is very important.
In order to see how this status bar area will look, once removed, all you have to do is follow these steps.
Firstly, you will have to launch your latest version of Chrome Canary web browser and visit chrome://flags from address bar. On the page visited search for Desktop PWAs Remove Status Bar, or if this appears a bit hard, simply paste this in the address bar chrome://flags/#enable-desktop-pwas-remove-status-bar. Click on the blue box with drop down menu, the option set mostly will be at “Default” change it to “Enabled” and then restart the Chrome Canary browser.
Open Chrome again and install any PWA, for example you can go to https://remotedesktop.google.com/ and install it from the address bar by clicking the circled-plus icon right next to Bookmark (star icon). Now after opening the PWA you won't be able to notice the status bar, either during the loading or by hovering mouse/pointer over the links.
What needs to be noticed is that under the option “Desktop PWAs Remove Status Bar” there is a flag description notifying that "Hides the status bar popup in Desktop PWA app Windows, Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS" affected by this change. This means that only the mentioned devices and operating systems have the ability for enabling the option for status bar removal. Android and iOS will show status bar unless Google enables the option on it too.
We cannot say whether the public is happy about this change or not considering no public survey has been taken as of yet, but we are also not sure if this change is here to stay as it is still under testing conditions. Whatever the taken decision will be we are sure would be according to the public demand because the Tech Giant keeps its user preference as a top priority.
Read next: Google Limits Access To Chrome API For Third Party Browsers And Developers Relying On Chromium
