WebAPK upgrade on changing Web App Manifest params doesn't work

[Abhishek Ghosh]

Hello,

In Paul Kinlan's article on "Improved" Add-to-Homescreen ( https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/02/improved-add-to-home-screen ), it says that as an update to the icon/name of the web app as defined in the Web App Manifest should trigger a WebAPK upgrade:

>>> You now have the ability to update your Progressive Web App's icon and name and have it reflected to the user. Changing your icon or name in the manifest will update the icon on the home screen after the user has subsequently opened the site.

As a web site developer, I've tried to understand and emulate this process but with no success yet. No matter how much I keep changing my web app manifest's parameters, open the website (that fetches this new manifest as verified from Dev Tools) both from the installed WebAPK icon or the Chrome browser, put it in background (it's understandable how a WebAPK upgrade may not happen if the app is in foreground) and so on, I have never been able to trigger a WebAPK upgrade - I've waited for days, tried both with same and changing manifest urls.

As a website owner, this worries me a lot to enable A2HS behaviour on a website I may own - How can I get my users move on to the new experience (name, icon, theme and so on) of my installed web app? If WebAPKs do not upgrade automatically, it's pretty much a dead end because we can't have any other website/service with our web-app listings to go and upgrade from (such as a play store or app store) as painful as that may be; as well as the website from Chrome's context menu (3-dot menu) now just says "Open in <WebAPK>" rather than something like "Add to Homescreen" which means a force-upgrade trigger from the user's end is also a no-go. The only possibility is a user explicitly uninstalling the app and re-installing using "Add to Homescreen" manually, which is extremely painful and unlikely to be done by most users.

From some documentation across the web (and from my really limited understanding of browsing through parts of Chromium source code), looks like there is supposed to be this WebAPK "auto-upgrade" path but due to whatever reasons I'm not able to test or trigger it. As a developer, how do I test out this WebAPK upgrade path? What am I missing? 

I've tried reaching out through other channels (Comments on developer.google.com or Medium, questions on StackOverflow etc. to see if there's anyone else facing this as well, sadly to no avail.) Hoping someone can help me out here!

Thank you, 

Abhishek

[Glenn Hartmann]

Hi!

I work on the WebAPKs team, hopefully I can help you out a bit.

This auto-update feature is implemented and enabled, so as far as I'm aware, based on the description you gave, you should be getting updates. One thing to note is that in some cases it can take up to 3 days for the update logic to trigger - I'm not sure how long you've tried waiting before.

If the 3-day waiting period is not the issue, then it is possible that we have a bug. Although we do have tests that cover this logic, it could be that you've run into some edge case that we're not aware of.

One thing I can do to try to help you is to check server logs to see if your update request is making it to us, or if it's maybe a client-side issue preventing it from being sent in the first place.

In order to do this, however, I'll need the manifest URL of the site you're testing on (it helps if this is a rather unique URL - something like "localhost:8080/index.html" might not help us much).

-Glenn

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[Abhishek Ghosh]

Hello Glenn, 

Really appreciate you helping out! 

Over time I've tried getting updates and waited which has been for more than 3 days for multiple attempts I'd have made. I've been trying my experiments on a https://inpwatest1.firebaseapp.com ( manifest URL is https://inpwatest1.firebaseapp.com/manifest.webmanifest ). It'd be really great if you can help me out from some information (through logs on your side or otherwise) or any potential reasons why I might not be ever getting updation triggered on my installed WebAPK, or anything else I can do from my side to help.

Regarding the 3-day wait for triggering an update flow, for testing it looks quite painful for web app builders... Is there any advice or recommendation from your end in terms of how web app developers can test such update flows out much more easily? I'd also imagine that as developers of the Chromium platform a 3-day wouldn't be the testing mechanism... Is there possibly some configuration I can set on the browser (or some build variant of it we can get access to) to make things easier for testing WebAPK updates?

Thanks,

Abhishek

[Peter Kotwicz]

Hi I also work on the WebAPK team. I wrote most of the update logic so hopefully I can help. Thank you very much for reaching out. It seems that you have identified some things that we need to improve.

I am including as much information as possible for the sake of completeness. I know that I am repeating some of what Glenn has said.

- We check for WebAPK updates when a WebAPK is launched. We don't check for updates when Chrome is launched

- We check for updates either every 3 days or every 30 days. Checking for updates every 3 days is the 99% case. We switch to the 30 day interval in some unlikely cases where the update server cannot provide an update (According to Glenn's logs you don't seem to be in the 30 day bucket)

- Clearing Chrome's data (via "CLEAR ALL DATA" in Android settings) resets the update timer.

- We will only update a WebAPK if the Web Manifest URL does not change. If you change the web page from referencing <link rel="manifest.json"> to reference <link rel="manifest2.json"> the WebAPK will no longer update

- We will only update a WebAPK if the WebAPK is not running (moving the WebAPK to the background is not good enough)

- We will only update WebAPKs if the WebAPK was created by an official version of Chrome (Stable/Beta/Dev/Canary). It does not work with Chromium. (org.chromium.chrome)

Example:

Jan 1 -> Install WebAPK

Jan 1 -> Launch WebAPK -> No update check

Jan 2 -> Launch WebAPK -> No update check

Jan 4 -> Launch Chrome -> No update check (Launching Chrome has no effect)

Jan 4 -> Launch WebAPK -> Check whether update is needed

Jan 6 -> Clear Chrome's data

Jan 9 -> Launch WebAPK -> No update check (From Chrome's perspective this is the first WebAPK launch)

Jan 12 -> Launch WebAPK -> Check whether update is needed

How to test for WebAPK updates:

Testing updates is easiest on an Android M device (or newer)

1) Launch WebAPK

2) Close the WebAPK

3) Modify the Web Manifest

4) Advance Android's system time by 3 days.

    On my device: Settings>System>Date & Time>Set date

5) Launch WebAPK, wait a few seconds

6) Run adb shell dumpsys jobscheduler | JOB.*91.*org.chromium.components.background_task_scheduler.BackgroundTaskJobService

Check that the output is not empty

7) Close the WebAPK

8) Run adb shell cmd jobscheduler run -f com.android.chrome 91

to force an update

(If you don't force an update, the update will occur sometime in the next 24 hours when your device is idle)

Debugging WebAPK updates is easier if your phone is rooted. Your comments have convinced me that we need to make debugging updates easier if your phone is not rooted. I have filed http://crbug.com/815282 where you can follow along if you wish. I am hoping that these improvements will make be in Chrome 66 which is targetted for release at the end of April.

Please let me know if you have any luck,

- Peter

[Pedro Almeida]

I'm having a similar issue where the WebAPK installed, after changing the manifest, uninstalled, always install the version 4. With Chrome Canary it installs an updated version 11. I could only make it install a new apk on Chrome stable when changing the app name, which is not desirable.

Do we also have to wait some time for an updated apk to be generated when installing, instead of using an already generated version from google servers?

I was trying to get a new apk where the launch screen uses the high res icon of 512px, but I am getting stuck with a version that is using the 192px, so I removed all the lower res icons so it forcefully uses the large layout for the splash. Also to make sure something wasn't wrong with my manifest, I installed the airhorner pwa, and for my surprise it used the small layout with the lower res icon, even if the 256 and 512 were specified. My device is a Moto G5 Plus 1080p, so it should always use the high res icon for the splash.

Any insight into this is appreciated, thanks.

Pedro

[Abhishek Ghosh]

Thank you Peter for the detailed response - it did help me a lot of figure out some of the nuances of WebAPK upgrades. Using your suggestions around force upgrades on the job scheduler, I was able to force and replicate a webAPK update scenario, so definitely some luck there, but the same commands didn't work for me older than Android M (also something you mentioned around... not yet sure how to test out there) - none of these were rooted devices and I was using a Chrome release build of v64. 

I'm really glad that you guys are working to make things such as testing webAPK upgrades easier for us. Excited to see some of these improvements come in future versions of Chrome!

Thanks,

Abhishek

[Peter Kotwicz]

Pedro, I think that you also filed https://crbug.com/819755 ? I have responded to the bug

Before Android M, we use GCMNetworkManager to schedule updates. There is unfortunately no way that I know of forcing tasks scheduled via GCMNetworkManager to run. These steps work for me on a Nexus 7 device.

1) Launch WebAPK

2) Close the WebAPK

3) Modify the Web Manifest

4) Advance Android's system time by 3 days.

    On my device: Settings>System>Date & Time>Set date

5) Launch WebAPK, wait a few seconds

6) Run adb shell dumpsys activity service GcmService | grep chrom | grep "tag=[\"']*91"

Check that the output is not empty

7) Close the WebAPK

8) Advance Android's system time by 1 day

9) Restart the device

10) Toggle WiFi on and off. Wait a few seconds.

11) Run adb shell dumpsys activity service GcmService | grep chrom | grep "tag=[\"']*91"

      Check that the output is empty

12) The WebAPK should hopefully now been updated

[Tai phung]

Does this solution work currently. I tried through steps, but at 6 i got output empty instead and app still not updated when manifest.json was changed. 

My develop environment: sam sung j7 pro, chrome stable 69. Hope to get your answer, thank.

Vào 05:40:13 UTC+7 Thứ Sáu, ngày 09 tháng 3 năm 2018, Peter Kotwicz đã viết:

[Aabhas Gupta]

Hi Peter, I tried forcing update my web app to take into account the changes done to the manifest file, without changing the manifest URL and it worked for me. However, I wish to know what is the code snippet that triggers the auto update without we doing the force update. I tried searching the chromium code base but I was unable to find the exact method that does the same. Since, you have worked on the updates of WebAPKs can you help me point out the exact place where I can find the update logic. It would be really helpful.

Thanks and regards,

Aabhas

On Saturday, 24 February 2018 04:46:05 UTC+5:30, Peter Kotwicz wrote: