Web Apps on macOS Sonoma 14 Beta

Some of my favorite details from the article:

> Different from iOS/iPadOS, credentials in cookies are copied over, so if you were logged in when running in the tab, you're logged in when you launch the app. No other storage means apart from cookies are copied.

> Same-origin (or in-scope if a manifest exists) links are handled in-app, cross-origin (or out-of-scope if a manifest exists) links open in the default browser. A notable exception are OAuth flow links, which are handled in-app based on a heuristic.

> Web apps run in the context of a separate process called `Web App.app`. Separating Safari and Web App allows both to run independently. You can open a Web app without opening Safari, you can close Safari without all web apps closing.

Buuutt... FileSystem API is not supported yet. Nor is drag-and-drop or LaunchHandler (open a specific file type with the web app). If we had those features, we could get back to storing and editing files on disk, using web apps, which would be a huge improvement for local-first apps.

Any sort of document-based app benefits tremendously from tabs, and thus it would be unfortunate to have to lose that feature when making it a Web App. I for example often need a couple Google Docs open at once. I would very much like to have Google Docs as a separate item in my Dock though. However, I don't want to be forced to have each individual Google Document in a separate window like it's Mac OS 9 just because it's a "Web App".

Or for example Airtable. I have a few Airtables that I basically always have open. I currently have them "pinned" just because if not they become impossible to find in the sea of other windows and tabs in my browser. I would love to command-tab to Airtable and bring these up, but not have them in an overlapping mess of windows.

Another great example is social media "Web Apps" (like Elk for Mastodon), which basically get "stacks" for free by leveraging tabs. Instead of the Elk team having to develop an "internal tabbing" feature, I can just have a tab for each hashtag I am following. But this does not mean that I want all these tabs mixed in with random other unrelated websites.

Literally any app (vs. "page") that uses multiple windows that you would personally prefer to group into tabs is a good candidate. Tabs are a window organizational tool, they have no inherent "webness" to them aside from that being the first place they originated. macOS's AppKit framework has built-in support for automatically making document-based apps support tabs with zero additional programming. I assure you this feature wasn't added in to allow anyone to write a web browser. In fact, I think the opposite of your assertion is true: the more like an "app" the thing you're turning into a Web App is, the more likely it is to use multiple windows, and thus the more it can benefit from tabs. I agree that if you are for some strange reason turning a blog into a Web App, then tabs don't make any sense, but it also doesn't make sense to turn it into a Web App.

You’ll have some cross browser issues but save on footprint.