If you frequently visit a website on your Android device, the Native Alpha app can turn it into an app icon while offering additional options.
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Video Description
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Not every website out there has a native application available in the Google Play Store. It costs money to build those apps and it takes time to not only create it but to also maintain it. This is why some websites, including the two that I currently own, have yet to introduce a native application for the community.
Thankfully though, there are some ways that you can take a website and have your smartphone or tablet act as if it is actually an application that you installed onto your device.
Native Alpha is a free Android application available in the Google Play Store that allows you to create an application icon on your home screen for any website. The advantage of using Native Alpha over the Chrome feature I just showed you is that you are given some unique options as to how these websites are rendered.
Features like blocking 3rd-party requests, preventing images from being loaded, automatically blocking cookies and refusing 3rd-party cookies as well.
This application works by tapping on the red floating action button down here in the corner, and then typing in the URL of the website you want to create an application icon on your Home Screen for.
We can then tap on that application icon to load up the website just like you would any other native Android application.
It will not display the address bar, like you normally see when viewing sites in a web browser, so it functions almost identical to a native application that can be installed on your Android smartphone or tablet. If the website is designed well, it will even look like it was always made for an Android smartphone or tablet.
Native Alpha also comes with some customization options that you can change for individual websites you add to it. . .or they can be configure globally across all of the websites that you use it with.
For example, we can block all JavaScript from being loaded when we visit a website using the Native Alpha Home Screen shortcut. Or we can tell it to block all 3rd-party requests. Most permissions are blocked by default, such as access to your location, the camera, or the microphone, but those can be configured here in the Settings as well.
There is a way to enable adblock, a toggle that will prevent all images from being loaded, and an auto-load toggle that we can use to automatically refresh the website every X number of seconds. We even have options here that will allow us to pinch-and-zoom, to always open up the website in desktop mode, and an Expert Settings feature that gives us the option to set a custom user agent when loading up the website.
All of these options can be configured globally for every website we add to the application, but it can also be customized on an individual website basis.
So you can see the advantages of using an application like Native Alpha rather than using the Add to Home Screen feature that is built into web browsers like Chrome. The application is available for free in the Google Play Store, I’ll even include a direct link to it in the video description below.
There is a paid version available right now that can be purchased for $3.50. It comes with all of the features you saw here as well as a way to load these websites in a sandbox, an immersive mode feature, and an experimental dark mode option that can be configured to automatically change depending on the time of day.
Native Alpha is a great solution for websites that do not have a presence in the Google Play Store. But it can also be used to avoid invasive permissions that we see so often in native Android applications. I see this application recommended quite often for people who use social media apps like Facebook and Twitter when they don’t want to deal with the hassle and restrictions that those apps have chosen to implement.
Mentioned Links
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Native Alpha in the Play Store –
Play Store Sales –
Play Store Finder –
Step by Step Tutorial
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1. Intro [00:00]
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The Gear I Use
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5W “Slow” Charger –
Fast Charger –
MicroUSB Cable –
USB-C Cable –
TPU Cases –
USB-C to 3.5mm Dongle –
USB-C to 3.5mm DAC –
onn 4K Android TV –
NVIDIA Shield TV –
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