I love progressive web apps (PWAs). When done right, they can look and feel just like native applications, with attractive visuals, deep customization options, and lots of diverse functionalities. Under-the-hood, PWAs are websites through and through, but they manage to break down platform barriers without sacrificing on quality.
PWAs are built with standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.), but they support niceties like push notifications, offline access, and more — all while using a single, unified codebase for efficiency.
There are plenty of excellent PWA applications available on the web, serving as cross-platform experiences that can be ‘installed’ across various operating systems. In my own case, I have plenty of PWAs set up on my iPad mini, sidestepping the Apple App Store entirely in the process.
Here are seven of my personal favorite PWAs, each one specializing in its own use case and offering up its own unique set of benefits when installed as an application onto a desktop or a home screen environment. The following web apps are all wonderful in their own right, far exceeding the experience of a standard run-of-the-mill website. Plus, they’re all free to use and feature no advertisements to boot.
Squoosh
Compress your images
Squoosh is a simple-yet-powerful utility that lets you compress the file size of an image directly from within your browser. Unlike some other solutions, this web app is streamlined, efficient, and free of upsells and pop-ups. Squoosh also makes it easy to compare images with different codecs, making it an indispensable tool for anyone who works with photos on a frequent basis. The web app’s flow is as basic as dragging and dropping an image right into a window, after which the magic commences.
Desktop Clock
Keep tabs on the time
Desktop Clock is a highly customizable clock web app that features not only a timepiece, but also a world clock, a stopwatch, and a timer. The aesthetic is minimalistic and approachable, with customizable date and time formats, the ability to configure colors and font size, as well as the option to show your battery percentage. Analog and digital clocks are both available here, in addition to a fullscreen mode for maximum immersion. The web app is filled with micro animations that make the experience come alive, and it honestly looks and feels better than many native clock apps found on various platforms.
Fast.com
Check your internet speed
Fast.com is a simplistic internet speed test web app that immediately springs into action the moment it’s launched. Powered by Netflix, the utility surfaces active upload and download speeds, in addition to both loaded and unloaded latency speeds. Other basic internet details can also be gathered from within the web app, including client and server information. Fast.com is a useful tool to have at the disposal, in particular when surmising whether your internet speed is adequate for streaming movies, TV shows, and video games.
WallpaperHub
Browse through background images
WallpaperHub is a well-built wallpaper web app that features a massive database of images to choose from. Both desktop (landscape) and mobile (portrait) backgrounds are available here, and downloads are available in a variety of sizes and resolutions. The web app surfaces popular wallpaper collections on its home page, with a Discover section that lets you view the full breadth of pictures. Of course, you can also home-in on exactly what you’re looking for using the Search function, too.
Monkeytype
Type as fast as you can
Monkeytype is a clean, easy-to-use typing test utility that features a unique and visually pleasing aesthetic. Essentially, the web app tasks you with typing out sentences as quickly as you can, and it then displays metrics relating to your speed. Once you’ve completed a prompt, you’ll be greeted with a words per minute counter, an accuracy percentage, a consistency percentage, and a full graph showing errors and more. Aside from being a fun time waster activity, Monkeytype can be a handy tool for anyone looking to improve their touch typing skills.
CO’WATCH!
An aesthetically pleasing timepiece
CO’WATCH! is another clock web app, but it stands out with its incredible attention to detail and its micro interactions. The animations are smooth and pleasant, the sound effects are deeply satisfying, and the entire web app just feels masterfully polished from top to bottom. The Watch section offers a variety of display options to choose from, including Balls, a quirky view that ticks down the time with a certain spherical charm. There’s also a Focus section that strips away all the extras and presents military time without any added distractions.
Speedometer 3.1
Perform a web app speed test
Speedometer 3.1 is a web app that lets you benchmark the speed of other PWAs on your current browser. It uses demo web apps to simulate the user experience, and does so on the fly the moment you press the Start Test button. After a few seconds, a score is spit out, with the option to then dive deeper into aggregated results and metrics. From here, you can even download a copy of your benchmark results as a JSON file or a CSV file. While slightly more technical than the other entries on this list, Speedometer 3.1 is great at what it does, providing insights into how your web browser handles PWAs as a whole.
