v134 · miscellaneous

Document Subtitle (Fix PWA app titles)

Installed web apps can change the text on the title bar based on the page's content. The current behavior is that the installed web application will put the app's name from the manifest and append the page’s inner text from the `<title>` HTML tag in the head of the page. This often can create awkward titles for some web apps. This feature allows to specif

concepts

  1. Document Subtitle

    <meta document-subtitle> separates a transient state suffix from the app's stable title. PWAs stop chasing tab titles for window state.

  2. Alt-tab disambiguation

    The named OS pain point: three windows of the same PWA showing identical labels in Alt-Tab. Simulated switcher with editable subtitles.

  3. State Stream

    Five real PWA patterns (mail, docs, IDE, chat, music) — pick a preset or write your own subtitle, watch the simulated title bar update before/after.

  4. Title Bar Preview

    Edit app name, document.title, and document-subtitle — see all three surfaces update live: window title bar, taskbar labels for 3 open windows, and the Alt+Tab switcher showing how disambiguation works.

  5. Breadcrumb navigator

    A documentation site simulation where clicking sidebar items updates <meta name="document-subtitle"> with the breadcrumb path. document.title stays stable as the app name while the subtitle communicates context — no more "Page › Section › App" stacking in the window title.

why it shipped

Installed web apps cannot provide dynamic/controllable contextual information in their title bar. Contextual information can be the name of an open document, the section of an app or any other information that can be relevant to the running installed Web app. Having this information in the title bar can be useful to identify the open window when selecting among open apps in surfaces like the Alt+Tab action on Windows (and similar actions on macOS and Linux to jump between open apps).

references