Get Installed Related Apps API

Abstract

As the capabilities of the web grow, the functionality of web apps begins to match that of corresponding native apps. The situation of users having a web app and the corresponding native app both installed on the same device will become more common, and the feature sets of these apps will converge.

It is important to allow websites to detect if an app is installed, whether a native app or a web app, to allow them to disable functionality that should be provided by the other app.

The GetInstalledRelatedApps API allows web apps to detect if related apps are installed on the current device.

Querying the installed local apps that specify the website.

From an async function:

const listOfInstalledApps = await navigator.getInstalledRelatedApps();
for (const app of listOfInstalledApps) {
  // These fields are specified by the Web App Manifest spec.
  console.log('platform:', app.platform);
  console.log('url:', app.url);
  console.log('id:', app.id);

  // This field is provided by the UA.
  console.log('version:', app.version);
}

Describing a relationship from an application to website (and vice versa)

This API is being developed with the assumption that a system exists to create associations from installed applications to websites.

We can define relationships between a website and other applications by using the "related_applications" member of the web application manifest.

Example:

{
  "related_applications": [
    {
      "platform": "play",
      "url": "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.example.app1",
      "id": "com.example.app1",
      "min_version": "2",
      "fingerprints": [
        {
          "type": "sha256_cert",
          "value": "92:5A:39:05:C5:B9:EA:BC:71:48:5F:F2"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "platform": "itunes",
      "url": "https://itunes.apple.com/app/example-app1/id123456789"
    },
    {
      "platform": "webapp",
      "url": "https://example.com/manifest.json"
    }
  ]
}

Each platform has its own method of verifying a relationship. In Android, the Digital Asset Links system can be used to define an association between a website and an application. If the application is installed locally and defines an association with the requesting web application, we return the app as defined in the "related_applications" member.

Privacy Considerations

This feature only works with sites using HTTPS. This ensures that the website cannot be spoofed, and that the association between the site and application is valid.

The association between the web app and its counterpart is bidirectional, meaning that the web app has to declare its association with the related app, and the related app has to declare its association with the web app. This prevents malicious websites from fingerprinting users and getting a list of their installed applications.

User Agents should also take timing side channel attacks into account in their implementation, to avoid potential leaking of information about installed applications on a user's device. To remove the timing side channel, implementations could pursue several options. One is to delay resolution of the API call by a random, but fixed per app, delay. As long as the caller cannot predict, guess, or otherwise determine what the delay was, nor re-query many times to filter out the delay 'noise', the caller gains no timing side-channel information about the installation status of the app.

User Agents may also limit the number of related apps checked to limit the amount of fingerprinting information exposed to websites.

The User Agent must not return installed applications when running in a privacy preserving mode, for example Incognito in Chrome or Private Browsing in Firefox.

Abuse Considerations

For websites that own native applications that generally come pre-installed on a platform, this API can be used as a privacy mode detector if the native app is found to be missing (albeit with a non-negligible false positive rate). User Agents are encouraged to keep track of how this API is being used, specifically for the few origins that own the native apps that are pre-installed on a specific platform.

Another abuse concern is that web applications might use this API to drive users away from a web environment, to the native counterpart. Although this practice already exists in the wild, User Agent should be wary of this potential abuse vector. Note that this is why no installed applications must be returned when running in a privacy preserving mode.

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