How is "MangaDex for mobile" made possible?

[Ichirou2910]

TL;DR: how does MangaDex hide browser GUI when used as a browser shortcut on mobile?
Long story:
About when MangaRock said goodbye, I was introduced to MangaDex. The first problem was that it doesn't have a mobile app (using Android phone, dunno about iOS). And then someone said to use Home shortcut so I tried it.
Bruh it worked like charms! It became a "valid" mobile app with start screen and custom "app" icon (visible in task view). I tried with a few other websites but it just opened new tabs on browser, not like MangaDex.
Here is my simple comparison between opening mangadex website on browser and opening it as home shortcut.
- Directly on browser: browser GUI visible, and mangadex is in a tab (as with all other opening websites).
- Home shortcut: literally an app itself, no browser GUI, even though the shortcut icon has browser icon on it, no tab or sth.
So my question is, how is that possible? I do study IT, in case the answer is more about IT techniques, been searching on GG but no luck.

 

[Dreik]

@Ichirou2910 That is a browser feature, not something MD offers natively.

Add to Home screen (or A2HS for short) is a feature available in modern browsers that allows a user to "install" a web app, ie. add a shortcut to their Home screen representing their favorite web app (or site) so they can subsequently access it with a single tap.

You can read more about it here.
I do believe the end goal of the devs is to make the site into a PWA, but that will probably take a while.

There are also 3rd party apps for Android like Neko & Tachiyomi.

 

[Ichirou2910]

Oh thanks for the info, I will look into the docs. So the keyword here is PWA, meanwhile I kept searching things like "how to hide address bar blah blah"