Add to home screen

New question: I there a way to add this forum to my phone Home screen? If use browser there is not that Add to home screen option but Open PC Forum. And when I open pc forum there are no options, or are there?

When I used sandbox I did managed to put it on my home screen, but now I do not know how. How do you use this forum from your phone?

Hi @Silpa, I’m guessing from your image that you are using your phone’s browser to access the forum, is that correct? I am sure there is a way to add it to the home screen option, but in case you didn’t know, perhaps you could consider using the Discourse app directly to access the forum? You can download it here for Android or here for iPhone

Personally I find that easier to do than making a bookmark on the home screen that would lead to the forum. I don’t know about you though! :slight_smile: Hope this might be helpful!

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I don’t know much about Android, but I’m sure there’s a way.

Perhaps this won’t work, but can you check if you still have the icon for the sandbox? If so, can you remove it and check it you can add the new one afterwards? Since the name of the two forums is the same (“Postcrossing Community”), perhaps that’s preventing it from showing the option to add to home screen.

For anyone else landing here and looking on how to do this on iOS:

Just click on the share icon at the bottom of the screen and in there you should find a Add to Home Screen option.

Now I know what was wrong in the first place! During sandbox I had downloaded PC Forum application but deleted the icon from my home screen. So when I tried to add browser page to home screen there was not that option but Open PC Forum. Finally I understood I still have that app in my phone and now I have the icon back in my home screen. But I was confused because it is not at Google Play Store anymore. Is that bug or temporary or final @paulo?

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Not sure if this helps, but the name of the actual app is Discourse hub (not PC Forum). It’s named this way because you can use the same app with other forums based on the same software (Discourse).

To be clear, by this I’m not referring to adding a website as an icon to the home screen, but to the actual app version.

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Now I am quoting myself :smile: Just wondering that maybe the app was never at Play Store, using Add to Home Screen just makes it app at my phone. Am I making any sence…

Right, so, you can add a website to you home screen. It will have an icon that looks like an app, but in fact is just a shortcut to the website.

You can however install an actual app (called Discourse hub) that you should be able to find in the Play Store.

The forum itself will look very in either version (app or icon shortcut). The main advantage of using the app (instead of the shortcut) I believe is that you can get notifications from the forum. This may be a good thing, or very distracting :stuck_out_tongue:

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Okay, great! Learning new things every day :blush:

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This is exactly the way I like.

The “Add to home screen” option on suppoorted browsers installs the Progress Web App (PWA) of the forum. Essentially it’s a small app that runs on the existing browser, not just a shortcut.


Seen here, my PWA was created by Chrome and it uses the Chrome (Chromium) name in package.
I also receives live notification in the PWA, just need to toggle it in Preference/Notification.

I don’t understand the notion behind using the official “full” Discourse app. It’s buggy, hence the 2-star review on both Android and iOS. It’s also large and clunky (install size: 30 MB full app VS 0.4 MB PWA, full app is nearly 100-times larger than PWA). Besides, the full app hasn’t been updated in half-a-year, while PWA can be updated independently whenever you login to sync up with the newest upstream code.

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I believe that on iOS the app is (currently) the only way to get the notifications.

:arrow_up: Then where did this notification come from?
I am on Android 9 and using only Progressive Web App (PWA) “PC Forum”, no browser login or Discourse Hub, just pure PWA with live notification enabled.

I said on iOS, not Android.