Google’s packaged Chrome apps could be making the move from browser to mobile as soon as next month. TheNextWeb team today stumbled across a GitHub repository called Mobile Chrome Apps. Led by Michal Mocny, a software dev at Google, the repository hosts a toolkit for developers looking produce Chrome apps specifically for mobile devices and for porting existing Chrome apps to Google Play and the iOS App Store.
The toolkit allows for modification of design, fixing of bugs, testing, and more through Apache’s Cordova. Documentation on GitHub suggests support for Android 4.x as well as possibly Android 2.2 and Android 2.3 at a later stage. iOS support is apparently in development but it doesn’t seem to be as far along as Android (it’s marked as ‘TBA’). Right now, rumors point to a January beta release.
Google’s packaged Chrome apps are modified web apps written in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS, and they work offline, can save data both locally and to the cloud and are able to interface with third-party devices like cameras and peripherals.
Google declined to commented on whether or not it will be bringing packaged apps to mobile, but it wouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. Some apps, like Google Keep, should enjoy a pretty seamless transition to mobile, while others, like Google Docs and Sheets, might not translate as well to smaller screens.
Source: TNW
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