Web-Facing Change PSA: Navigations can now be captured into an installed PWA

Web links now direct users to installed web apps to align with users’ installed app expectations. Users have the option of turning the behavior off or on from the installed web app’s settings page. Developers can control the behavior by using the launch_handler manifest property.

A version of feature is launched on ChromeOS today but is off by default (and has key differences that break web platform experiences, see https://bit.ly/pwa-navigation-capturing for more information)

Today, only installed web apps having the launch_handler field specified in the manifest are automatically opted into this behavior. Once partner testing is complete, this behavior will be enabled by default for all installed web apps.

Blink components

Blink > AppManifest

Chrome components

UI > Browser > WebAppInstalls > Desktop

Tracking Bug

crbug.com/267495181

crbug.com/324435093 (Windows, Mac and Linux)

crbug.com/366547977 (ChromeOS)

Estimated milestone

M134: Launched, enabled by default for installed PWAs that specify a launch_handler

M135: Planned launch to enable by default for all installed PWAs

Nate Chapin

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Jun 24, 2026, 6:49:45 PM (6 days ago) Jun 24

to Dibyajyoti Pal, blink-dev, pwa-dev

Follow-up PSA: We're fixing a bug in our implementation of capturing a navigation to an installed PWA.

When https://crrev.com/c/7963209 lands (for Chrome 151), we will allow a PWA to capture the creation of new auxiliary browsing contexts (e.g., window.open(url, '_blank')) if: (1) the new window creation is triggered from within a PWA, and (2) the target url is in the PWA's scope. This means that PWAs can window.open() into that PWA's preferred window/tab type based on the PWA's display mode, rather than opening in a non-PWA browser tab.

Feel free to reach out to pwa-dev@chromium.org if you have any questions or concerns!

~Nate

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