Last week, Google released Chrome 99, which includes numerous optimizations and improvements to keep the browser machinery running smoothly. One of the new features it picked up introduces the ability to uninstall Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) directly from Windows Settings, just like you would a native Windows program. While that sounds great in theory, it turns out there’s a problem with how it works.
Uninstalling a PWA is now easier than ever: just go to the Windows apps and features menu, and they’ll appear alongside all your other apps, programs, and games. So far so good – what’s the problem?
Unfortunately, the only PWAs that seem to appear in the Windows settings menu are those that are installed after updated to Chrome 99. In testing, we observed that although the settings screen initially didn’t include our existing web apps, uninstalling and reinstalling Twitter eventually prompted the PWA to appear. If you use a lot of web apps (as we like it), this behavior could prove to be a significant downside.
Hopefully, this is something Google can rectify in future releases, because treating PWAs like regular system-level apps is exactly the kind of progress we like to see.
Read more
About the Author
