Stop reloading of web app launched from iPhone Home Screen

Rand picture Rand · Aug 3, 2011 · Viewed 34.4k times · Source

I created a web app and added to my iPhone Home Screen. When I switch to another app and back, iPhone automatically reload my web app. This breaks my app flow.

How do I prevent iPhone from reloading the app?

I have apple-mobile-web-app-capable meta tag enabled to hide Safari toolbar and I don't want to turn it off.

Answer

René picture René · Aug 4, 2011

I just found this related question on SO: Stop native web app from reloading itself upon opening on iOS

As it seems it's a limitation of Safari, a proposed solution is to persist your web apps state using Javascript and HTML5 localStorage. When your web app is launched, check for the persisted state and load it if available.

You can read about using localStorage in Safari here: http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/SafariJSDatabaseGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007256-CH1-SW1

Hope that helps you. At least it did for me, as I had the same problem as you. :-)