What Can Progressive Web Apps Do Today?
Progressive Web Apps can be installed like native apps, work offline, send push notifications, and access device hardware such as the camera, Bluetooth, and NFC. That's the short answer from What PWA Can Do Today, a site that is itself a PWA and hosts 40+ live demos you can run on your own device to see which capabilities are actually supported. The catch: support varies by browser and operating system, so the demos are the fastest way to check your specific target rather than trusting a general compatibility list.
What a PWA actually is
A Progressive Web App is a website that gains native-app behaviors through browser APIs. It can be added to a home screen or desktop, continue working without a network connection, and reach hardware and system features that ordinary web pages historically couldn't. Because the site is a PWA itself, you can install it and then test each capability directly on your phone or computer.
Capabilities demonstrated on the site
The demos are grouped by capability. The main ones:
| Capability | What it enables | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Installation | Native install dialog for a web app | beforeinstallprompt event |
| Offline support | App works without a connection | Service Worker |
| Notifications | Alerts even when the app isn't active | Notifications API |
| Declarative Web Push | Push notifications without a service worker | Declarative Web Push |
| Shortcuts | Quick access to pages from the app icon | App shortcuts |
| View Transitions | App-like transitions between pages | View Transitions API |
| Incoming Call Notifications | Notification when a call comes in | Incoming call notifications |
| Geolocation | User shares location with the app | Geolocation API |
| Media capture | Camera and microphone access | Media capture |
| Media Capability Elements | Camera/mic access via browser-controlled elements | Media Capability Elements |
| AirPlay | Stream video from a PWA to an Apple TV | AirPlay (iOS/macOS) |
The site also lists device hardware access more broadly — camera, Bluetooth, and NFC — as part of what PWAs can reach today.
How to use the site to test your own device
- Open the site on the device you care about.
- Add it to your home screen or desktop. The "Add to home screen" button becomes enabled only when your browser supports installation, so a disabled button is itself a signal.
- Open the demos and run each one. The site provides a "PWA capabilities" checklist that shows which capabilities your current device and browser support.
- Toggle "Show demo info" to see the explanation behind each demo.
The expected result is a device-specific picture of support, not a generic yes/no. If a demo fails, that reflects your browser/OS combination, not necessarily the API in general.
When things break
If you hit problems implementing a PWA, the site points to a free pwa-check tool for identifying and fixing issues. For release confidence, it recommends integrating a PWA Runtime Audit into your CI/CD pipeline — useful if you ship frequently and want to catch capability regressions before users do.
Staying current
PWA support changes quickly, so the site runs an email list with a weekly update on PWAs and new modern-web features, explained in plain English. That's worth following if you're building against these APIs and need to know when a capability lands or changes.
Practical takeaway
Use What PWA Can Do Today as a test bench, not a spec sheet: install it, run the demos on your actual target devices, and read the capability checklist as your compatibility baseline. Then use pwa-check and a runtime audit in CI to keep that baseline from drifting.