PAWA gets its (possibly) last major update

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PAWA has been a staple here for fans of PWAs, i.e. Progressive Web Aapplications, as being implemented by many companies around the world for their mobile web sites. Edge already runs most of these PWAs under Windows 10 Mobile, with PAWA facilitating their launch without the typical Edge URL bar and other browser 'furniture'. But now a wider range of PWAs should be accessible, thanks to support for telling the relevant sites that you're using an Android or iOS device (even if you're not!) and, with this new major update, the facility to store which user agent you want used on which PWA. Pretty cool.

Here's the official changelog for v2.3.7:

  • The App now uses a different database to store data. You will have to migrate your Tiles by going to the Dashboard and Tapping Migrate Data.
  • Added a couple more UserAgents Firefox for Desktop and iPad Mini for Tablet Forms
  • Enabled Dashboard to manage all the WebApps. You can now manage settings on a Individual App basis. So if you need one App to use one UserAgent while having another use a different one its possible.
  • Permissions also can now be set for each WebApp, so you can allow Google Maps location access but keep it restricted for others etc.

As ever, I took the new version for a spin:

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A friendly note about 'migrating' your tiles, see the button on the right....

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In the Tile Creator, note the new 'App Option' control - this pops up all the tile-specific properties, with User Agent highlighted and exploded here; (right) my favourite PWA game in action, thanks to PAWA... Here I've just passed 50, to huge applause!

You can grab PAWA in the Store here. This is a great addition to Windows 10 Mobile, especially as there are now so many HTML5 sites and PWAs taking the place, in many cases, of native WP8.1 or UWP applications. Yes, some are now bundled in the Store as standalone installs, but most aren't and it's here that PAWA steps in.

Understandably, the developer has said that this is the last major update for PAWA - but he's still open to fixing any major bugs.