I just created a Brave app for a particular Facebook Group — the only place I ever want to go on Facebook — so that I could avoid opening a whole browser window, where I might be tempted to go elsewhere in social media.
But when I open this stand-alone Brave app, where does it take me? NOT to the group page I was on when I created the app, but to Facebook.com — to my homepage, or feed or whatever you call it.
I don’t want to go ANYWHERE on Facebook except this one group. But as near as I can tell, that’s impossible.
Am I missing something? Why do Brave apps ignore what page you’re actually on when creating a free-standing app?
This is probably a Chromium thing, not a Brave thing, but is there any way around this? Freestanding apps are pretty useless if they can’t start where you want them to start, and can’t even remember where you were when you closed them.
@100WattWalrus PWA tend to be more limited, with it relying on the JSON and all from the website. In other words, it’s Facebook that overall controls that opens when you launch the PWA via whatever they set in the start_url defined in the web app’s manifest file.
That said, you can get something of a workaround. It’s a PWA without fully being a PWA. The problem is as much as it looks like a PWA, clicking various links will shift you back over to the full version of the browser.
For example, in the command/target line of the Brave shortcut you have on your desktop, you could have:
What you’re adding is --app=https://www.facebook.com/groups/YourGroupID to the end of what’s already there to launch Brave. You would replace YourGroupID with the right one. Or you could replace Facebook with whichever website you want.
For example, I did it with https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/ and clicking it launches like below. It’s basically a PWA but it’s not actually installed as one.
Btw, I don’t use PWA enough to know much of how they generally work. But I will say in my testing with Brave, some things are weird. Like on the example l gave with Reddit, whether I installed PWA officially or did my workaround, if I clicked on topics it would always open them in the full browser with URL bar and all available. It wouldn’t stay in the same window.
But on Chrome, it stayed in the page. So Brave is a bit awkward in its handling of some things. I’m not sure if this would happen more in different places or if it’s just a bit of a “bug” on Reddit itself.
@Saoiray , thanks for the suggestion. Got a Mac version of that?
I hope Brave can improve on PWAs in the future. I wonder if there’s a Mac app similar to Hermit for Android that creates sandboxed PWAs. I’d rather have a working Brave PWA, what with the Shields and the anti-fingerprinting and such.
I have never had a Mac or anything, so I didn’t have an answer. But I ran it through ChatGPT and the answer is as below:
Great — here’s how you can create a standalone PWA-like experience using Brave on macOS, similar to the Windows workaround.
Method: Create a custom Brave app using Automator or Terminal
Option 1: Use Automator to Create a Brave “App” for a Specific Site
Open Automator (found in Applications)
Select “Application” as the type of document.
In the left search bar, find and add “Run Shell Script”.
Paste the following in the script field:
open -a "Brave Browser" --args --app=https://www.example.com
Replace https://www.example.com with the site you want.
Save the Automator app somewhere (e.g., Applications or Desktop).
You now have a clickable “app” that opens the site in app mode via Brave.
Option 2: Create a Terminal Launcher Script
If you prefer scripts or want to integrate with tools like alfred or Raycast:
Open Terminal and run:
open -a "Brave Browser" --args --app=https://www.example.com
To make it reusable, save that line in a shell script (.sh file) and make it executable.
Notes:
This works only if Brave is installed in /Applications.
Like on Windows, some links may still force the window to fall back to the full browser.
Would you like a downloadable Automator .app file preconfigured for a site like Facebook Groups or Reddit? I can guide you or create an Automator-compatible script you can load.
Yeah I don’t think this is specific to Brave and is likely just how the feature works in the Chromium engine. When you go to install a website as an app – in this case Facebook – you’re installing facebook.com as an app, not the specific link you’re on. I just tested this in Chrome and Opera as well and see the same thing. The site will initially open to the page you were on, but if you close the PWA then open it again, it will land you on the main page of whatever site is for the installed PWA. Tested this using youtube.com as well and see the same results.
If you only ever want to visit that specific Facebook group and nowhere else, I think that you’d be better off using a bookmark, homepage icon, or pinning the tab for that specific group in the browser.
Option 2: Do It Yourself Now