PWA Manifest `display_override: ['minimal-ui ]` vs `display: minimal-ui` on Chrome Android

explainer.md

Tested on Chrome 91 Desktop/Android.

display: "minimal-ui"

The demo on https://piotrswigon.github.io/pwa-demo/minimal-ui/ uses "display": "minimal-ui" in its manifest:

"display": "minimal-ui",

Launch behavior on Desktop

Chrome 91 Android renders a (read-only) URL area at the top of the page. This is expected.

Launch behavior on Desktop

Renders a browser back arrow & refresh button. This is expected:

display_override: ["minimal-ui"] with display: standalone fallback

Note: this section uses a different PWA than above

Using "display_override": ["minimal-ui"] changes the behavior on Chrome 91 Android:

"display_override": ["minimal-ui"],
"display": "standalone",

Launch behavior on Desktop

PWA continues to show the back arrow & refresh button as expected:

Launch behavior on Mobile

Chrome Android 91, opens the app in standalone mode. This is desirable (we want back arrow/refresh buttons on desktop but standalone mode on mobile), but unexpected. Chrome Android supports "minimal-ui" so why is it falling back to to display: standalone?

Thank you, this was very helpful for understanding the issue. I have now filed https://crbug.com/1222578 where I was able to reproduce this.