# Generate Linux desktop launchers for Progressive Web Apps

**pwa-launcher** is a command-line program to generate Linux desktop app
launchers for Progressive Web Apps, using either Firefox or Chromium.

This tool will create a launcher in your standard Linux applications list
that uses the favicon of the website in question and will launch the site as
a web app in Firefox or Chrome.

**Note:** at time of writing, Firefox stable (77.0.1) has some support for
"site specific browsers" but it is not enabled by default. Enable it in
`about:config` by setting **browser.ssb.enabled = true**.

## Dependencies

The `icotool` command will be used to extract PNG images from a website's
favicon.ico file. Install it with e.g. `apt install icoutils`. If the command
is not available, only PNG images such as apple-touch-icons can be used
automatically by this program. (.ico files with image/png mime types will
be used as PNG images directly, too).

## Usage

```bash
pwa-launcher [options] <url>

# Examples
pwa-launcher https://www.reddit.com/
pwa-launcher -title Reddit -browser google-chrome https://www.reddit.com/
pwa-launcher -browser firefox-esr https://www.youtube.com/
```

Options (all are optional unless they can't be auto-detected):

* **-title**

    Set the app name for the launcher. The default will parse the `<title>`
    of the website if available.

* **-browser**

    Specify what web browser to use. Use either the absolute path
    (/usr/bin/firefox) or just the command name. The default will search
    for a suitable browser, preferring Firefox > Chromium > Google Chrome.

* **-icon**

    Specify an icon image to use with the launcher. Can be a local icon on
    disk or at an HTTP URL (will be downloaded). The default will search
    the website's HTML to find icons and also check some well-known URIs
    for Apple Touch icons. The largest available icon size is used by
    default.

* **-exec**

    Manually provide the exec line for launching the web browser. By
    default a suitable value is used based on whether you're using Firefox
    or Chromium. Providing this option will override the `-browser` option,
    as the `-browser` is really only used to determine the command name
    and type of browser you're using.

    Example values include: `firefox --ssb %s` or `chromium --app=%s`

    Use the placeholder "%s" where the URL would go in the command.

* **&lt;url&gt;**

    The web URL that the launcher will open. If a title and icon are needed,
    the program will parse the HTML at this URL and search for titles
    and icons.

## Launchers and Icons

Desktop launchers are placed in the user's home directory at
`~/.local/share/applications/` and their app icons (PNG images) are
placed in `~/.config/pwa-launcher`

File naming convention is like `pwa-$(domain)-$(time).desktop` where the
domain is the base domain of the site (e.g. `www.reddit.com`) and the time
is a Unix timestamp.

To remove launchers and icons, delete them from the above locations.