Ready for Developer Testing: Sub apps

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2:42 PM (4 hours ago) 2:42 PM

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Contact emails

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Explainer

https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/sub-apps

Specification

https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/sub-apps/pull/2

Design docs

https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/sub-apps

Summary

Sub Apps allow developers to create multiple apps each with distinct names, icons and OS Integrations under a single Isolated Web App (IWA) installation. Windows of sub apps appear on the shelf with their specific identity, distinct from the parent app. Sub Apps are deeply integrated with the OS and offer capabilities such as file type association. This enables a single software package to represent different, isolated functionalities to the user while maintaining a single, unified IWA install and update process.

Blink component

Content>WebApps

Web Feature ID

Missing feature

Goals for experimentation

None

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

Other browsers may choose to implement this API.

Gecko: No signal

WebKit: No signal

Web developers: No signals

Other signals:

Security

Sub-apps share origin identity and all local data stores with their parent app, exposing them to standard same-origin security boundaries. Permission grants are shared bidirectionally; granting a permission to a sub-app automatically extends that permission to the parent app. There is a risk of identity spoofing and launcher hijacking, which is mitigated by restricting the API to isolated contexts. Registering custom OS integrations requires explicit user approval to prevent unauthorized protocol handling or file type hijacking.

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

No information provided

Debuggability

There's no special devTools support for this feature. It is possible to add sub apps, remove and list them via devTools console raw javascript execution.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

No
This feature is implemented on desktop platforms, although it will only be available to the end users on platforms that support Isolated Web Apps, which is currently only ChromeOS. Android is excluded because installing arbitrary apps is complicated there and needs additional work.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

No
JS API interface tests are in third_party/blink/web_tests/external/wpt/subapps. More complete tests that cover all cases are in chrome/browser/web_applications/sub_apps/sub_apps_service_impl_browsertest.cc

DevTrial instructions

https://github.com/vkrot-cell/subapps-demo

Flag name on about://flags

#enable-sub-apps

Finch feature name

SubApps

Requires code in //chrome?

True

Tracking bug

https://buganizer.corp.google.com/issues/414729785

Launch bug

https://launch.corp.google.com/launch/4466158