What is a Progressive Web App?
A progressive web application, also called PWA for its acronym, is a new type of web application that emerged from the evolution of web technologies. These allow a web application to behave like a native application while still running from the browser, thereby improving the user experience.
Its main features include the ability to use the computer’s hardware and provide some additional functions such as sending push notifications, working without an Internet connection or adding its icon to the home screen to run directly from there, such as an installable app would.
In other words, Progressive Web Apps are still web apps that open from a mobile or desktop browser, but they can behave like native apps without forcing their developers to spend resources to publish them in the usual app stores of a mobile device. or desktop system.
One of the main drivers of this trend is Google, which is why its video platform YouTube is one of the main representatives, although Twitter and Facebook are other notorious examples of progressive web applications.
How to install YouTube on Windows 10 and Windows 11
Open the YouTube page from your computer’s Chrome or Edge browser.
In Chrome, locate the PC monitor icon with a down arrow in the address bar and click on it. Then, confirm the installation of YouTube on Windows.
In Edge, go to the address bar, locate the grid icon with a plus sign at the top right, and click on it. Then, confirm the installation of YouTube on your system.
In both cases, you will have the YouTube app icon on your desktop as a response. From now on, with two clicks on said icon you will be able to access the video platform as a native application.
This way of using YouTube on your PC has several advantages over the standard web version, one of the main ones being the convenience of putting it on a secondary monitor to watch movies or videos.