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2026

  • in Tooling
  • 10 min read

Auditing PWAs After Lighthouse Dropped the PWA Category

Lighthouse 12.0.0, released on April 22, 2024, removed the Progressive Web App category, and Chrome 126 DevTools shipped without it. There is no replacement score. Chromium's own installability check is still there, in DevTools and in the DevTools Protocol, and everything else the category covered now needs a small script and a checklist. This post explains why the category went, where each of its audits ended up, and what a PWA audit looks like now. The full, maintained workflow, with custom Lighthouse audits, user flows and CI configuration, is on Lighthouse & Auditing.

  • in Analysis
  • 18 min read

PWA Myths Debunked

Most arguments about Progressive Web Apps are built on facts that were true at some point: "iOS doesn't support push" (true until 2023), "you need a service worker to install" (true in Chrome until 2023), "Safari deletes your data after seven days" (partly true, with exceptions most people miss). This post takes twelve of the most repeated claims and checks each one against the specifications, browser source code, release notes and MDN's compatibility data as of September 2026. Some are simply wrong, some are outdated, and a few are half right in ways that matter for how you build.

Service Worker Update Patterns Compared

When you deploy a new service worker, the browser installs it next to the old one and then has to decide when the new version takes over the pages that are already open. There are five established ways to handle that moment: wait for every tab to close, activate immediately with skipWaiting(), ask the user to reload, switch at the next in-app navigation, or activate and reload automatically. Each trades update speed against the risk of running old page code against a new worker. This post compares all five, puts them through the same deploy scenarios, and ends with a decision table and a hybrid policy that lets each release choose its own pattern. The step-by-step implementation of each pattern lives on Updating Service Workers.

  • in Analysis
  • 23 min read

The State of Progressive Web Apps in 2026

Progressive Web Apps in September 2026 are easier to install and harder to define than at any point since the term was coined. Apple removed every installability requirement on iPhone and iPad, Chromium rebuilt how installed apps update, move between origins and get installed in the first place, and Firefox came back to desktop web apps after four years without them. This post goes through what each engine shipped between early 2025 and September 2026, what still separates the platforms, and which pending decisions will shape the next year.