Enhancing the Mobile Experience with New PWA Features

As part of our ongoing mission to ensure Invision Community 5 feels as smooth and modern across all devices, we’re pleased to announce several improvements in 5.0.10 that enhance the Progressive Web App (PWA) experience.

What is the PWA and how do I use it?

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a mobile-optimized version of your community that users can add to their device’s home screen, just like any regular app. It launches in full-screen and supports push notifications and badges (when enabled).

To install the PWA:

• iOS/iPadOS: Tap the Share button in Safari (square with an arrow), then tap "Add to Home Screen."

• Android: Tap the three-dot menu in Chrome, then tap "Add to Home Screen."

The goal for this update is to make your community feel closer to a native app and to make the PWA more accessible, so lets take a look at what's new!

Pull to Refresh on iOS

Adding pull-to-refresh in the iOS PWA has been a popular request in our feedback forum and I'm excited to share that it has now been implemented. Just like in a native app, users can swipe down to refresh the page in iOS, making it easier and more intuitive to see the latest content.

This feature replaces the Refresh button previously found in the mobile footer and brings the iOS experience in line with modern mobile app standards.

Loading animation

Navigating between pages in PWAs could sometimes cause confusion due to the lack of a loading indicator. To alleviate this, a custom loading animation has been added which should reassure your visitors that the next page is actually loading. It’s a subtle addition, but it's one which many visitors would expect to see in modern mobile apps - and now they can!

Installation prompt banner

Some users may not be aware that they can install your community directly to their device like a native app. To help with that, we’ve introduced a new installation prompt banner to help guide them through the install process.

This banner appears when users are browsing your community in a mobile browser. Tapping the banner brings up step-by-step instructions tailored to their device. It’s a gentle nudge that increases PWA adoption while also respecting your visitors choice with a dismiss button.

App icon badges

Receiving a notification on the community now adds a notification badge to the PWA icon on your home screen, even if the PWA isn’t open. It’s a great (and familiar) way to inform your members that there’s fresh content waiting for them, and it's just a single tap away.

Redesigned enable push prompts

Enabling push notifications has never been easier. You are now prompted not only in the main notifications menu, but also when tapping follow on any item.

More improvements coming soon

This is part of our ongoing commitment to make Invision Community 5 the best possible experience on mobile. We’re already working on additional improvements to make the mobile experience even more polished and I look forward to sharing them with you in a future update!

View full blog entry

Loving everything about this. When will this be rolled out? I’m just curious.

These changes will be available in the next update, 5.0.10 👍

I think I'll finally start using PWA. I didn't like it before.

I tip my hat to Invision! Well done on these great improvements.

Fantastic update, smashing it as always Ehren. Thanks for your hard work!

Lovely work as always guys! Very much appreciated. ❤️

Would also like to say that I love the update videos - they are informative, not too long and very well produced.

Really appreciate the extra effort going into making those for us. Thank you.

👍

44 minutes ago, James Hargreaves said:

Would also like to say that I love the update videos - they are informative, not too long and very well produced.

Really appreciate the extra effort going into making those for us. Thank you.

👍

We enjoy making them, thanks for the positive feedback.

On 7/14/2025 at 10:00 AM, Ehren said:

Loading animation

Navigating between pages in PWAs could sometimes cause confusion due to the lack of a loading indicator. To alleviate this, a custom loading animation has been added which should reassure your visitors that the next page is actually loading. It’s a subtle addition, but it's one which many visitors would expect to see in modern mobile apps - and now they can!

What would really improve mobile experience would be speed, it shouldn't take two of those new blue bars to load a page for instance. Xenforo load instantly, I know you mention they are not competitors but thats one thing they still have over you

45 minutes ago, marklcfc said:

What would really improve mobile experience would be speed, it shouldn't take two of those new blue bars to load a page for instance. Xenforo load instantly, I know you mention they are not competitors but thats one thing they still have over you

That may very well be the only thing.

1 hour ago, marklcfc said:

What would really improve mobile experience would be speed, it shouldn't take two of those new blue bars to load a page for instance. Xenforo load instantly, I know you mention they are not competitors but thats one thing they still have over you

I don’t think you can compare the speed of a production site against my localhost connected to a tunnel via ngrok so I could record on my phone using a site in dev mode with all caching off.

PWA's are something a lot of people are sleeping on when for over a decade we've been conditioned in "you have to have an app" mentality. Looking forward to the next update for this.

Amazing work Ehren and team! Love it!

Oh @Ehren you little beauty, what an update!

19 minutes ago, Day. said:

Oh @Ehren you little beauty, what an update!

I can hear that gif lol

all sounds great

a quick question

to take advantage of all the new features will users/members need to re-install the PWA on the phone once the site has updated to 5.0.10?

7 minutes ago, sound said:

all sounds great

a quick question

to take advantage of all the new features will users/members need to re-install the PWA on the phone once the site has updated to 5.0.10?

Your app should keep working just fine and update itself in the background.

9 minutes ago, sound said:

all sounds great

a quick question

to take advantage of all the new features will users/members need to re-install the PWA on the phone once the site has updated to 5.0.10?

You shouldnt need to, no

Thank you @eren ! I was looking into having an Ios and Android app built to get more people using push notifications. Now, I may not need to !

This is increased value for both us Admins and our forum members.

P.S. Phuck Xenforo!

Edited July 18, 2025Jul 18 by Cruizin

1 hour ago, Cruizin said:

Thank you @eren !

Wrong @Ehren! 😅

Ah crap!

Ehren sees all anyway, no tags required. 😁

Side note, whenever I press on this topic from the homepage on an iPhone, it’s taking me half way so I have to scroll to the latest post again. Not sure if connected in any way if you’re running it here now?

Just standard Safari, not using the web app.

18 minutes ago, Day. said:

Side note, whenever I press on this topic from the homepage on an iPhone, it’s taking me half way so I have to scroll to the latest post again. Not sure if connected in any way if you’re running it here now?

Just standard Safari, not using the web app.

When you say half way, is it the first comment?