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Elyra
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Litr
Web apps

Web apps

A web app is a site in its own app: its own icon in the Dock and Launchpad, its own window, and its own cookies and logins. It suits services you keep open all day, such as mail, chat, calendars and monitoring.

Creating a web app

  1. Open the site in Litr.
  2. Choose File → Create Web App… (or ⌘K → Create Web App).
  3. Check the name. Litr suggests one from the page title, for example NRK for "NRK.no – nyheter …" or Fastmail for "Inbox – Fastmail".
  4. Check the icon preview. Litr uses the site's own icon (its apple-touch-icon or favicon) on a rounded square in the site's colour. If the site has no usable icon, it uses the name's initial. The initial updates as you edit the name.
  5. Press Enter or Create.

The app is created in ~/Applications (the Applications folder in your home folder). Spotlight and Launchpad find it there. Open starts it and Show in Finder reveals it.

The app uses the address of the current tab, or a pinned tab's pinned address.

Using a web app

A web app opens straight to its site, which is always its first, pinned tab.

  • No sidebar or toolbar. A slim title bar shows the page title.
  • ⌘L shows the address bar until you press Enter or Esc.
  • ⌘S shows the sidebar, for when the site opens extra tabs (sign-in windows, links opened in a new tab).
  • Everything else works as in Litr: shortcuts, find, zoom, downloads, the command palette, ad blocking, and its own settings (⌘,).
  • The menu bar shows the app's name.

Separate data

Each web app keeps its data apart from Litr and from other web apps:

  • Cookies, logins, local storage and cache belong to that web app. You can be signed in to one account in Litr and another in the web app.
  • Tabs, history and settings are its own too, stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Litr/WebApps/<app id>/.

Updates

A web app contains its own copy of Litr (about 3.5 MB). When you update Litr, it updates the web apps it created the next time it starts.

Removing a web app

Open Litr's settings (⌘,) and find Web apps at the bottom. Click Move to Trash next to the app. You can also drag it from ~/Applications to the Trash.

This removes the app, not its data. To remove the data as well, delete:

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Litr/WebApps/<app id>/
  • ~/Library/WebKit/<app id>/

<app id> looks like no.gets.litr.webapp.mail.

Security

Web apps are built on your Mac from Litr's own signed binary and signed locally (ad hoc). Because they are not downloaded, macOS does not quarantine them and they open without a Gatekeeper prompt. Don't copy a web app to another Mac; create it there instead.

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