14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has become a software developer that’s fully committed to the Android ecosystem, and the company not only that launches plenty of apps supposed to run on Google’s mobile OS, but it’s also preparing its very first phone powered by it.
And with Microsoft getting more and more involved in the world of Android, it was probably just a matter of time until the software giant started working with Google on several important projects.
One of them is bringing more PWAs to the Google Play Store, and this week, Microsoft and Google announced a new joint effort to make the whole thing happen.
More specifically, the two companies have added support for Microsoft’s PWABuilder and Google’s Bubblewrap to work together in an attempt to make it easier to bring a PWA to the Google Play store.
Advanced support for PWAs
The two apps should now allow for web shortcuts support and advanced Android features and customizations, as Judah Gabriel Himango, a PWA engineer at Microsoft, explains.
“PWABuilder now supports the full range of trusted web activity options that makes your PWA shine on Android devices. From PWABuilder, you can customize the appearance of the Android status bar and nav bar in your PWA, customize your Android splash screen, change your launcher name, use an existing signing key, utilize deeper push notification support, configure your package’s ID and versioning, fallback behavior and more,” Himango notes.
A PWA that’s published in the Google Play Store now supports additional customizations, such as package ID, app and launcher name, app version and version code, status bar and nav bar colors, splash screen color and fade out time, icon URL, signing key, and display mode.
On a related note, Microsoft is now giving the finishing touches to its first Android phone, as the Surface Duo is expected to go live any day now.