How to use The Fire Panel Forums like an app

The Fire Panel Forums now works better on mobile than ever before! One of the benefits is that it utilizes the ability to be a full screen web application on both iOS and Android, some details are here:

Note: this is unable to send push notifications to your phone, you will still need email for that.
Update April 2023: It appears that the latest version of iOS (16.4 as of writing this) is now capable of native push notifications using this method, very similar to a real app!

iOS Instructions

1. Open The Fire Panel Forums in Safari on your iOS device, and while on the home page of the forums, press the “share” button in the bottom of the page:
   
   

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2. Select the “Add to Home Screen” option in the menu (You will likely need to scroll to find it, may show up differently on older versions of iOS)
   
   

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3. Unfortunately, the default name is “The Fire” as it gets cut off. You can change this name to TFP Forums, or whatever you choose, then press the ‘Add’ button in the upper right.
   
   

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4. You should now see the forum icon on your home screen! Press to open.
   
5. You’ll likely need to log in again, but this should only be necessary once. And that’s it! You can now use the forums very similarly to an app on your phone!
   
   

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Android Instructions

currently in progress

I have noticed certain images do not properly display using the iOS “app”, but do however when using safari. Any thoughts on what might be causing this?

is there going to be like an actual app in the app store or google play store, I mean like it can just be something we download from a site to our phones depending on how you want it.

Very unlikely. Unless Discourse ever make a the ability to generate an app, probably easiest just to utilize the website feature like this.

You can also do this with Windows! With Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome!

How to do it on Chrome.

1. Click the monitor with down arrow icon.
   

   

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2. Click Install.
   

   

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3. There you go. Here is the Chrome App View.
   

   

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Mobile Notifications are available on android since chrome for android supports it
Apple doesn’t think website notifications is important so

This can probably only be done with discourse forums

Some themes on PHPBB also support using the forum in an app like use

Ahahaha my name is on the screenshot. That’s funny lol

True, but phpBB caused me way too many problems and was overall clunky to manage

What a coincidence! It should be fine though. Even Zach is in the screen shot.

How about those Android instructions?

(Sorry Zach, I’m an Android user now. I’ve betrayed you.)

Hi @DerpyFireAlarms, I don’t give answers to sinners.

Plus those Android Instructions are in Progress!

Update: iOS 16.4 seems to have added functionality for native push notifications from web apps that use this method. You can be prompted to enable them if your phone is up to date, and you open the Forums ‘like an app’

How do I do this? I’m pretty sure my phone is at iOS 16.4, but all notifications seem to go to my email.

You’ll need to make sure of two things:

1. In your phone settings navigate to Notifcations > Scroll Down to TFP Forums (however you named it!) > Ensure Allow Notifications is set to on
   a. You may need to open the ‘app’ first if you haven’t done so recently

2. In the forums preferences, navigate to “Email” and adjust your settings for email notifications accordingly.

Me saying that Android instructions are ‘in Progress’ is like @kcin556 saying he has new videos coming in May.

Let them figure it out themselves. If they can figure out the rest of android os, which doesn’t seem to be for the technologically illiterate, they can figure out how to add a webpage to their Home Screen, and push notifications.