Show HN: WebCatalog – turn websites into desktop apps
webcatalog.appHow does this compare to the below?
google-chrome --app=https://example.com
firefox --ssb=https://example.com
Hi everyone, it's Quang from WebCatalog,
Certainly, if the built-in "install-as-app" of major browsers work well for you, then it's great.
WebCatalog tries to make the concept simpler and more accessible to average users. Most people are familiar with the concepts of apps and app stores so our vision is to build an app store for web apps that gives users easy access to desktop apps (many not available elsewhere). A user doesn't need to know what is difference between a website or an app, they just need to open WebCatalog and install the apps they want like they usually do on their phone. For a power user, this might sound unnecessary, but this is proven wrong as there are plenty of apps like "X for Gmail" or "Y for Netflix" on Mac App Store and Microsoft Store. It is also the reason why companies like Notion and Slack build web-wrapper desktop apps.
One more point, we're not only letting users install chromeless window apps. If you give it a try, for example, with the Gmail app on WebCatalog [1], you can switch between multiple accounts using workspaces, set the app as the default email client, attach it to the menu bar or taskbar, etc. They're real apps with executables, not just bash scripts. And we're trying to integrate the web apps with your system and make it feel native-like as much as possible. And we're going to add many more features soon. In other words, we're trying to bring the experience that web-wrapper apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Notions offer to every web app.
I've been bootstrapping WebCatalog since 2017. I and many people around the world use it every day. It's a well-tested idea. It's only now that we decide to launch the product widely.
Looking at the size of your catalog I'm going to guess that you didn't work with all those sites to distribute their apps through your site. Maybe I'm not understanding how this works, but wouldn't you need some sort of license to do this? If someone downloads the Gmail app from your catalog, but it doesn't work the same as the plain web client, they would probably blame Google and not you. I can't imagine Google would like that.
84.4MB AppImage, probably yet another electron wrapper. At least this one provides single runtime image for all apps.
Yes, it's built with Electron. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the framework. Plenty of amazing apps are built with Electron, and they're fast and snappy. Without Electron, we'd never be able to bring WebCatalog to all major desktop platforms.
People use electron because it's literally the only option in many cases.
Can you point to a viable alternative? Multiplatform by default, with the option to build rich reactive UI? Plus text editing with a sane document model (via ProseMirror etc)? Fast math rendering (via katex)?
If so I will happily jump ship! Even Microsoft's attempt at a react native for desktop excludes Linux so it's a non-starter. The Rust community seems to be interested in solving this problem, and I eagerly await their solution.
Is there a way to do this on Mac where you can open several app windows and use ALT+tab to switch between them? I know you can use CMD+` to swap between Chrome windows but this is a productivity killer if you have to first ALT+tab to Chrome and then use CMD+` to get the window you want.
Thank you for bring this up. This is exactly what WebCatalog is built for. Every app you install through WebCatalog works just like a Mac app so you can switch between them using Alt+Tab.
For each app, if you need to, you can divide the app into workspaces (similar to how Slack workspaces) which you can switch between using Cmd+1, Cmd+2, etc.
This is trying to sell the concept of a chrome-less browser-window ("install as app"), a feature your browser already has.
Do we need to link to that famous Dropbox comment again?
Sometimes convenience can be enough.
I think one big problem with this approach is that if the people behind this find a niche good enough its very easy for browsers to just implement the new ideas and completely kill the competition giving everyone has a deployed browser already.
Im doing something that is based on browsers for instance, but the end product diverge quite a bit from traditional browsers and if they try to play the catchup game, i have at least a 2-year window of opportunity.
Remember PhantomJS? And Phantom was actually providing something browsers were not doing at the time.
It has no real distinct features from what browsers already do right now, and whatever way they make it easy to use, if the product by some change get traction, it will be easy for them to just ship with that feature built it.
It may provide some value on convenience, but its easily copiable by a competitor that is deployed everywhere, which is a big threat to their bussiness model.
Dropbox offered far more than just convenience. And at least it was something new.
This on the other side has very very slim novelity and convenience. And tools like this exists since at least a decade and never really took off. Maybe for a reason?
Kind of reminds me of a talk by the third YouTube founder on how the convenience of not having to download video from ftp was enough.
Easy Accessibility is key.
Unrelated to the parent comment, but what is this Dropbox comment?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 is the comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16660140 is some discussion around it later.
> This is trying to sell the concept of a chrome-less browser-window ("install as app"), a feature your browser already has.
As a dev, service workers are a PITA and getting them to work with with our products is a bit of a hit and miss. Installable / pinnable web apps are only available if the original web dev has made them available. Web catalog and electron wrappers are for people who want to wrap apps and sites that are not nor ally available.
You do not need service workers to do what Web catalog/electron wrappers are doing:
google-chrome --app=https://example.com
firefox --ssb https://example.com (sadly requires enabling the ssb feature)
Sure, you can have a tool to create "desktop shortcuts" for the casual user, but this is not worthy of a commercial product.
So they're like PWAs, but unlike PWAs you need to pay for them? :D
> By default, WebCatalog uses WebCatalog Engine, an Electron-based browser engine we develop to generate apps.
> WebCatalog also supports Brave, Google Chrome, Chromium, Cốc Cốc, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Yandex Browser or Vivaldi
https://help.webcatalog.app/article/14-is-it-possible-to-cre...
Lots of comments that this provides standard browser builtin features for a fee but I see at least a few features that could be nice and I wouldn't know how to do so easily in standard browsers. (Attach to menubar, sync between devices, pick engine, for example)
Effectively its a paid for browser which, considering Mozilla owes of recent, maybe it's not a bad idea.
This is amazing!
I have said for a while that if someone built a tool that would let me be signed into multiple AWS accounts, and switch as needed at the same time, I would buy it in a heartbeat.
You have my 20 dollars now.
One request, though. I would like a way to show the name of the workspace on the workspace switcher panel, instead of just ctrl+1/2/as etc
Just mentioning two related programs in my mind: Franz (https://meetfranz.com/) and nativefier (https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier).
I personally use Rambox (https://rambox.pro/) instead of Franz these days, or just click the "install as app" button in my browser.
Really, I see little value over these browsers with vertically stacked tabs. There's already free solutions out there, what's the added value? Workspaces are easy to replicate using Firefox's containerised tabs and the vertical tab structure can be replicated with something like Tree Style Tabs. The remaining minor improvements are nice to have but certainly not worth $20 in my opinion.
1. Open any site.
2. Click on menu option at the top right of your browser.
3. Add to home screen (select open as window)
Am I missing something? My desktop computer doesn't have a "home screen" and I don't see anything like this option in Chrome or Firefox.
Chrome makes it available to websites providing a PWA manifest, I believe. Firefox doesn't really have it on desktop yet, though there's a button and support for it on Android. Shortcuts on the desktop get added to where your computer would normally place these icons, be it your desktop, start menu, dock or apps folder.
You can sort-of replicate the behaviour by creating a shortcut to "chrome --app=https://www.example.com" for websites that don't offer it.
Firefox currently only has it as an experimental feature which you have to enable manually in about:config. I would have to say it still lacks a bit of polish. You can find it by searching for firefox ssb.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/enable-site-specific-browser-...
I think it only shows for pages with a manifest file (pwa) and I've only seen it in chrome as well.
What browser does that work under?
Any Chromium one I guess.
Seems similar to Fluid (https://fluidapp.com/) which i found useful many years ago, albeit Mac only and likely much lighter/simpler
Asking as a noob. How is this any different from the `install as an app` option already present in Edge?
This works for non-PWA's. 'Install as app' is only present for PWA's right?
You also do the 'add to home screen' instead of using this app.
"Install as app" works for any page.
Is the wording 'Install as app' on all pages on edge? Other browsers show 'Install as app' only for PWA and 'add to home screen' for normal websites.
Edge doesn't show 'Install as app' in address bar but if you go to menu > apps there will be 'Install this site as an app'. I'm using apps for Duolingo, Ventusky, Airly, Livescore, Plaza One, Poolside FM. I even tried to make an app for this website and it worked.
Awesome, congrats on the progress Quang!
reminds me of discontinued mozilla prism