Android browsers can already add pages to home screen but Hermit takes this even futher.
It has significantly better UX with frameless and full screen modes. You can bookmark pages, so on Lemmy you can quickly bookmark community in specific sorting order. There are user scripts and blockers and loads of customization. You can even add push notifications for changes on the site or RSS feed.
I’ve been running most Fediverse web apps through Hermit and it works really well! The only exception is that I couldn’t figure out how to setup notifications on Mastodon.
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It is. I was wondering about Hermit’s business license and business model (free app? Free app with subscription-based premium? Anything else?), and this tells a lot. So, I see the upside of using this to replace some potentially invasive apps. However, I don’t it being that useful to replace open-source, less invasive apps.
From their website it seems to be a one time purchase of 7€, at least in Europe. Didn’t see a subscription option.
They used to have a subscription option but got rid of it
I use hermit as an alternative approach to multiple chrome profiles because somehow android doesn’t support this.
Hermit sandboxes your apps so you can have separate auth for the same “apps”.
Ok, maybe not “native” apps but it’s pretty close when configured well!
I don’t really see how this adds a whole lot except for removing the frames of the browser app. But in exchange you lose the ability to use addons and their corresponding scripts & styles, while all the extra features are paywalled.
Unfortunately browser apps are really buggy and never really cared for by neither Chrome or Firefox. So, it’s always like using a beta feature that sometimes works compared to Hermit which is quite polished.
is it on FDroid?
Native Alpha is somewhat equivalent. Very barebones however.
One thing I don’t understand is why when you add a lite app(Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn), go to login on that site and click to autofill with Bitwarden, why does it show as com.chimbori.hermitcrab?
Does this mean the Hermit app can see your login details for each site?
That’s a very good point. I’m not sure.
I know Hermit is using system’s browser which is known to be leaky (that’s what tiktok got in trouble for recently) and not as secure as Firefox. If you need security it’s probably best to stick with Firefox imo.
Why is this better than just installing a site as a PWA from a browser?
kbin as a PWA from Fennec works great.
