Install TimerKit as an App (It's a PWA, Not a Store Hostage)

What’s a PWA and Why Should You Care

PWA stands for progressive web app. In plain terms: it’s a website that your device can install and treat like a regular app. Own icon on the home screen. Own window when you open it — no browser address bar, no tab clutter. Works offline. Updates itself in the background.

The technology has been around since 2015. Google championed it, Mozilla backed it, Microsoft built it into Windows. It’s not experimental. It’s not a workaround. It’s a genuine alternative to native apps for anything that doesn’t need deep hardware access like Bluetooth or the camera roll.

TimerKit is built as a PWA from the ground up. Every timer, every clockface, every audio alert works after you install it — even with no internet connection. Your timer doesn’t care if you’re on a plane, in a basement gym, or somewhere with spotty wifi.

Why Not Just Use the Website?

You can. The website works identically. But installing the PWA gives you a few things the browser tab doesn’t:

It lives on your home screen. One tap to open. No searching for a bookmark, no typing a URL, no scrolling through open tabs to find it.

It runs in its own window. No address bar. No browser navigation buttons. No temptation to switch to another tab. Just the timer, full screen. This matters for the same reason we built TimerKit in the first place — fewer distractions.

It works offline. The first time you load TimerKit, it caches everything locally. After that, you could disconnect entirely and your Pomodoro timer, Tabata timer, breathwork sessions — all of it — works without skipping a beat.

It stays awake. TimerKit uses the Screen Wake Lock API to prevent your screen from auto-locking while a timer runs. This works in both the browser and the PWA, but the PWA makes it feel more like a dedicated device.

How to Install on Each Platform

The install process is slightly different depending on your device and browser. Here’s the short version for each.

Android (Chrome)

1. Open TimerKit in Chrome
2. Tap the three-dot menu in the top right
3. Tap “Install app” or “Add to Home screen”
4. Confirm the prompt

Done. TimerKit appears in your app drawer and on your home screen. It’ll launch in its own window, receive updates automatically, and work offline.

Android has treated PWAs as first-class citizens for years. The install prompt sometimes even appears automatically when Chrome detects you visit the site frequently. Google built the PWA standard, so it’s no surprise Android plays nicely with it.

iPhone and iPad (Safari)

Here’s where things get… political.

1. Open TimerKit in Safari (this won’t work in Chrome or Firefox on iOS — Apple forces all browsers on iOS to use Safari’s engine under the hood, and only Safari’s wrapper gets the install capability)
2. Tap the Share button (the square with the arrow pointing up)
3. Scroll down and tap “Add to Home Screen”
4. Tap Add

That’s it. TimerKit gets its own icon and launches in standalone mode.

Now, a brief aside about Apple and PWAs. Apple would very much prefer you download apps from the App Store, where they take a 30% cut of any transaction and control what software you’re allowed to run on the device you paid for. PWAs threaten that model because they bypass the store entirely — no review process, no commission, no gatekeeping. Apple has historically dragged its feet on PWA support: push notifications for PWAs on iOS only arrived in 2023, eight years after Android. In early 2024, Apple briefly tried to kill PWA support in the EU entirely before public backlash forced a reversal. The install process being buried in the Share menu instead of getting a prominent install button? That’s not an accident. That’s a company making a competing technology hard to find.

All that said — once installed, TimerKit on iOS works well. The timers run, the audio plays, the screen stays awake, and it updates automatically. Apple just makes you work slightly harder to get there.

Windows (Chrome or Edge)

1. Open TimerKit in Chrome or Edge
2. Look for the install icon in the address bar (a monitor with a down arrow), or click the three-dot menu and select “Install TimerKit”
3. Confirm the prompt

TimerKit installs as a windowed app. You’ll find it in your Start menu, and you can pin it to the taskbar. It’ll run in its own window, separate from the browser.

Edge users: Microsoft has been pushing PWAs hard — Edge will sometimes suggest installing sites as apps automatically. If you see a prompt, that’s what it is.

macOS (Chrome or Edge)

1. Open TimerKit in Chrome or Edge
2. Click the install icon in the address bar, or go to the menu and select “Install TimerKit”
3. Confirm

The app appears in your Applications folder and the Dock if you choose to keep it there. Same deal as Windows — own window, no browser chrome, offline support.

Safari on macOS: As of macOS Sonoma, Safari supports adding websites to the Dock via File > Add to Dock. This creates a web app shortcut that behaves similarly to a PWA, though Apple’s implementation is still catching up to Chromium-based browsers in terms of features like push notifications.

Linux (Chrome)

Same as Windows. Install icon in the address bar. Chrome manages the PWA as a standalone window. Works with most desktop environments.

PWA vs. Native App: What You Actually Get

Here’s the honest comparison:

	PWA (TimerKit)	Native App
Install size	~1 MB cached	50-200 MB typical
App store required	No	Yes
Offline support	Yes	Yes
Auto-updates	Yes, silently	Yes, with download
Push notifications	Yes (except iOS Safari, partially)	Yes
Screen wake lock	Yes	Yes
Background audio	Yes	Yes
Permissions requested	Minimal (audio only)	Camera, contacts, location, tracking…
Platform commission	0%	15-30% (passed to you)

The main thing a native app can do that a PWA can’t: access hardware APIs like Bluetooth, NFC, or the health kit. For a timer app, none of that matters. You need a countdown, audio alerts, and a screen that stays on. The web platform handles all of that.

What Happens When You’re Offline

When you install TimerKit, the service worker caches all the core assets: the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the audio synthesis engine. There are no sound files to download — everything is generated using the Web Audio API — so the cache is tiny.

If you lose connectivity after installing:

• All timers work normally
• Audio alerts play on schedule
• Clockface animations run at full speed
• The screen wake lock stays active

The only thing that requires a connection is loading a page you haven’t visited before. Once you’ve opened a timer, it’s cached. Visit the Pomodoro timer, the Tabata timer, and the breathwork timer once each while online, and they’re all available offline permanently.

Why We Went PWA-Only

We could have built native apps. It would’ve meant maintaining three codebases (web, iOS, Android), submitting to app store reviews, paying Apple their 30%, and shipping updates through a pipeline that adds days of lag for every bug fix.

Instead, we write the code once and it runs everywhere. Updates go live instantly. There’s no middleman deciding whether our timer app meets someone’s arbitrary content guidelines. And you get the same experience on every device.

The web is the platform. The browser is the runtime. TimerKit is the proof that you don’t need an app store to build something worth using.

Install it, or don’t. The timers work either way. But if you want a timer app that lives on your home screen, launches in one tap, and doesn’t ask for your email address — open TimerKit and hit that install button.