The web app manifest is a simple JSON file that tells the browser about your web application and how it should behave when 'installed' on the user's mobile device or desktop. Having a manifest is required by Chrome to show the Add to Home Screen prompt.
A typical manifest file includes information about the app name, icons it
should use, the start_url it should start at when launched, and more.
Create the manifest
A complete manifest.json file for a progressive web app.
{
"short_name": "Maps",
"name": "Google Maps",
"icons": [
{
"src": "/images/icons-192.png",
"type": "image/png",
"sizes": "192x192"
},
{
"src": "/images/icons-512.png",
"type": "image/png",
"sizes": "512x512"
}
],
"start_url": "/maps/?source=pwa",
"background_color": "#3367D6",
"display": "standalone",
"scope": "/maps/",
"theme_color": "#3367D6"
}
Tell the browser about your manifest
When you have created the manifest, add a link tag to all the pages that
encompass your web app:
<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json">
Key manifest properties
short_name and/or name
You must provide at least the short_name or name property. If both are
provided, short_name is used on the user's home screen, launcher, or other
places where space may be limited. name is used in the
app install prompt.
"short_name": "Maps",
"name": "Google Maps"
icons
When a user adds your site to their home screen, you can define a set of icons for the browser to use. These icons are used in places like the home screen, app launcher, task switcher, splash screen, etc.
icons is an array of image objects. Each object should
include the src, a sizes property, and the type of image.
"icons": [
{
"src": "/images/icons-192.png",
"type": "image/png",
"sizes": "192x192"
},
{
"src": "/images/icons-512.png",
"type": "image/png",
"sizes": "512x512"
}
]
start_url
The start_url tells the browser where your application should start when it
is launched, and prevents the app from starting on whatever page the user was
on when they added your app to their home screen.
Your start_url should direct the user straight into your app, rather than
a product landing page. Think about what the user will want to do once
they open your app, and place them there.
"start_url": "/?utm_source=a2hs"
background_color
The background_color property is used on the splash screen
when the application is first launched.
display
You can customize what browser UI is shown when your app is launched. For example, you can hide the address bar and browser chrome. Or games may want to go completely full screen.
"display": "standalone"
| Parameters | |
|---|---|
value | Description |
fullscreen |
Opens the web application without any browser UI and takes up the entirety of the available display area. |
standalone |
Opens the web app to look and feel like a standalone native app. The app runs in its own window, separate from the browser, and hides standard browser UI elements like the URL bar, etc. |
minimal-ui |
Not supported by Chrome This mode is similar to fullscreen, but provides the
user with some means to access a minimal set of UI elements for
controlling navigation (i.e., back, forward, reload, etc).
|
browser |
A standard browser experience. |
orientation
You can enforce a specific orientation, which is advantageous for apps that work in only one orientation, such as games. Use this selectively. Users prefer selecting the orientation.
"orientation": "landscape"
scope
The scope defines the set of URLs that the browser considers to be within your
app, and is used to decide when the user has left the app, and should be bounced
back out to a browser tab. The scope controls the URL structure that
encompasses all the entry and exit points in your web app. Your start_url
must reside within the scope.
"scope": "/maps/"
A few other tips:
- If you don't include a
scopein your manifest, then the default impliedscopeis the directory that your web app manifest is served from. - The
scopeattribute can be a relative path (../), or any higher level path (/) which would allow for an increase in coverage of navigations in your web app. - The
start_urlmust be in the scope. - The
start_urlis relative to the path defined in thescopeattribute. - A
start_urlstarting with/will always be the root of the origin.
theme_color
The theme_color sets the color of the tool bar, and may be reflected in
the app's preview in task switchers.
"theme_color": "#3367D6"
Learn more about theming in this video.
Splash screens
When your app first launches, it can take a moment for the browser to spin up, and the initial content to begin rendering. Instead of showing a white screen that may look to the user like the app is stall, Chrome will show a splash screen, until the first paint.
Chrome will automatically create the splash screen from the manifest properties, including:
namebackground_coloricons
The background_color should be the same color as the load page, to provide
a smooth transition from the splash screen to your app.
Icons used for the splash screen
Chrome will choose the icon that closely matches the 128dp icon for that device. 128dp is the ideal size for the image on the splash screen, and means no scaling will be applied to the image.
Again, providing a 192px and a 512px icon will be sufficient for most cases, but you can provide additional icons as necessary.
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Test your manifest
To manually verify your manifest is setup correctly, you can use the Manifest tab on the Application panel of Chrome DevTools.
This tab provides a human-readable version of many of your manifest's properties. You can also simulate Add to Home Screen events from here. See Testing the app install banner for more on this topic.
If you want an automated approach towards validating your web app manifest, check out Lighthouse. Lighthouse is a web app auditing tool. It's built into the Audits tab of Chrome DevTools, or can be run as an NPM module. You provide Lighthouse with a URL, it runs a suite of audits against that page, and then displays the results in a report.
What's next?
- If you're using a web app manifest, you'll probably want to set up an app install banner as well.
- A complete reference to the web app manifest is available on the Mozilla Developer Network.
- If you want feature descriptions from the engineers who created web app manifests, you can read the W3C Web App Manifest Spec.
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