system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Currently, is there anything a mobile (Android/iOS) app can do that a website can't?

I say currently because I do understand that the mobile-friendliness of the web has evolved very dramatically over the years, and that of course when many apps began their lives years ago, there were a great many things a standalone app could do that a web page within a browser app could not - not least, to take the most obvious example, the kind of complex interactive animations which were for a time off-limits to the mobile web when Flash was dying and yet web standards hadn't fully caught up to replacing all of Flash's main functionality.

However, today, in 2022, is there anything an app can do that a website can't? We now have web programming that can take into account swipe gestures, websites can send push notifications, websites can ask for location permissions and access to contact lists, etc, etc, etc. And most websites now offer the choice to add a web shortcut to one's mobile home screen - which functions similarly to an app, in that when you tap on it, it opens the website in question.

There are a few reasons I ask this (not least because what I call AppSpam, "download our app to use this or that feature", is becoming increasingly irritating and I wonder if it's ever actually necessary!) but primarily I ask more out of a social/cultural interest - Over the last few years as the internet has become increasingly politicised, one major flashpoint has become the gatekeeping of mobile app availability by app stores, particularly in the context of devices which, unlike traditional desktop devices, restrict end-user ability to install applications to those approved by the device or OS vendor. Within the last week, for example, it's been widely speculated that the ongoing changes taking place at Twitter could soon cause the company's mobile apps to slam headfirst into content moderation requirements imposed by Apple and Google for the App and Play stores respectively, which result in apps being removed when they do not impose such rules. Other social networks designed to provide platforms for users banned from mainstream ones have previously been banned from app stores - with news articles citing these incidents as "the death knell for this or that social network".

Does this *really* matter though? Is any actual functionality lost by having one's app removed from an official store (apart from visibility) when there's a mobile website which can seemingly duplicate all of its features, and the ability to add such a website as a home screen shortcut which, for all intents and purposes, is able to behave (at least on the surface) exactly like an app - notification bubbles, location services, etc?

Tl;dr, in 2022, is there *really* much of a functional difference between having an app through which mobile users access your platform (that they access on desktop through normal web browsers) and simply having a website that is accessed through a mobile web browser and associated shortcuts?
gpt
Yes, native apps, besides being written for a native UX (assuming developers take advantage of native development workflows and patterns, rather than shipping an Electron / React Native app), can use native APIs which result in better apps, both in terms of developer productivity, and app capabilities and features.

For example, on Android, a wealth of APIs are available through Google Play Services and the Android OS:

- Powerful location APIs
- SafetyNet / Play Integrity APIs
- Android Keystore
- Native authentication APIs, including biometric
- Ability to register intents, handlers, app actions (e.g., to allow integration with voice assistant) + run in the background
- Much more powerful notifications that users can interact with
- The granular permissions model of the OS, which enables access to all these

- Ability to provide widgets
- ML Kit, providing on-device, performant APIs to run common ML workflows like vision, natural language processing, etc. that's actually performant and won't kill your battery
- gRPC

iOS has its own suite of capable APIs that native apps can integrate with.

> And most websites now offer the choice to add a web shortcut to one's mobile home screen - which functions similarly to an app, in that when you tap on it, it opens the website in question.

That's called a progressive web app, and they're not at all the same in terms of performance or capabilities.