Google Chrome is getting a new Progressive Web App feature

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Interest has been expressed on this forum concerning reading and writing files to the local device, not within the manifest. The following link indicates Google is working on this:

This article only mentions “reading” files. Hopefully the API will add writing permissions as well. (Note that writing text files in Chrome (Android or Windows) can be accomplished using link.download, search this forum for “link.download” for how to do this.) Read text files back into the app using a text object set to inputType=file.

If or when this API does appear, it would be nice to see AS incorporate this API.

Thanks, John

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Don’t get too excited. This seems to cover the case of the user double clicking on a file and having it open in your PWA app.

The general problem with letting web apps freely open files on your system is that they could open files you have no intention of sharing, such as your contacts file. Since PWAs can be downloaded directly from the web, there is very little to restrict a malicious actor from creating an app which says it does one thing, but does something quite different on the side.

If you add writing files, there is much, much more room for mischief.