this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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A regular app is an executable you install on a machine. Typically people associate "app" with specifically mobile apps, but technically a program you install on Windows can be called an app, but most people differentiate those by calling them a "program"
A web app is just a name people use for a website that looks and behaves in an "applike" way.
Like you wouldn't call a blog a web app because blogging is just content you consume.
But if you make a website that "does" something, like a tool (for example most of google's tools you can use like Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc), folks like to call that stuff a "web app", because it sort of serves the same purpose of what an app installed on your machine would do but it runs inside your browser on the internet, instead of as an installed executable.
You also then get further specific to what is called the "Single Page Web App", or SWP. These are web apps that also are notable for the fact they pretty much are just 1 single page with all their functionality in 1 place, no need to navigate to another url triggering a page reload, the entire web app exists at 1 single endpoint and all of its "pages" are within its own logic.
For example if you have a web app where it has "tabs" or "modals" that you can sift through within the webapp, instead of needing to load an entire new url+web page to view em, thats a SWP.
I would also like to add that there are PWAs (Progressive Web Apps).
PWAs can be installed on most devices and share even more similarities with native apps (Native app = usually installed through app store). For example installed PWAs can be viewed in Fullscreen or work offline, even though they are still technically a webpage.
So the advantage here is that you don't need to use an App Store to have an app installed on your phone.
And the main disadvantage is that the PWA can't access most of the device's APIs, that you could access through a native app. This means worse performance usually, no support for theming beyond dark/light (like Material You), no good access to on-device databases etc. This is also the reason why most apps aren't PWAs.
Although that is changing slowly. PWAs are starting to get more and more support for APIs on the devices. For example if you install te Microsoft teams app, afaik it’s also just a web app, but bundled with all the rest so that it seems like a normal app.
PWA’s can even have hardware GPU support nowadays.