With Chrome 57, Progressive Web Apps will appear in Android's app drawer, settings, more
Abner Li / 9to5Google :
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a gap a web developer had already documented: back in 2016 he argued Android PWAs were indistinguishable from native apps while iOS lagged behind on WebKit limitations — but they still lived inside Chrome rather than the system. Chrome 57 is the step that removes that asterisk, letting installed web apps surface in the app drawer and settings alongside everything else.
The move also set the template other surfaces followed: Google later brought PWA support to desktop with Chrome OS 67, and by 2020 Microsoft was working with Google on getting PWAs into the Play Store itself. What starts here as an Android convenience becomes the argument for web apps as first-class citizens everywhere.
First-order effects
- Users who install a PWA through Chrome now see it in Android's app drawer and settings like any downloaded app, removing the last visible tell that separates it from a Play Store install.
- Developers gain a distribution path that skips the Play Store entirely while still looking native to the user — directly relevant to the iOS-vs-Android capability gap the 2016 developer exodus highlighted.
Second-order effects
- Apple faces sharpened competitive pressure: when Android treats web apps as indistinguishable from native ones at the system level, WebKit's limitations stop being a technical footnote and become a platform-choice factor for developers weighing the two ecosystems.
- Google effectively builds a second app-distribution channel beside the Play Store — one it controls through Chrome — forcing the question of whether store-packaged PWAs (the route Microsoft and Google later pursued) complement or cannibalize it.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Chrome OS adopting PWAs, then Play Store integration — the native-versus-web distinction erodes into a packaging decision, and the real power shifts to whoever controls the browser engine and the OS surfaces where apps appear.
- App-store gatekeeping economics come under structural strain: every OS vendor must decide how much of the store's role to concede to the open web, with Android conceding first and others following on their own timelines.
The trend: Mobile platforms are progressively granting web apps native-level system integration, with each OS vendor deciding how much of its app-store moat to open along the way.