There's an add to home screen button, but it's buried deep in the share sheet and the average user doesn't know about it.
We already have a "X company has an app" banner API on iOS, it seems fitting that webapps have an option to match.
And the Safari provided "X company has an app" banner is a lot less annoying than any third party "HEY WHY AREN'T YOU USING OUR APP" banners in that it goes away when you scroll down instead of being fixed to the top of your screen. If a native feature can keep people from making a shittier version and sticking it all over, then I vote yes.
Your example, though, directly contradicts the point you're trying to make. Apple does have a native feature for showing when there's a native app available, and -yet- we see those third-party banners.
Having the native API to do something doesn't make the third-party crap banners go away.
Yes, not every site wants it to be unobtrusive, they view the nagging as a feature. But for sites that aren't assholes I think they should have a standardized option like the app store's smart banners.
I guess the real question is "If we didn't have smart banners, would even more websites use obnoxious full screen popovers and fixed position headers that pop back up every time you visit the page?" I think the answer is yes, fixed position headers are a really easy/lazy thing to tack onto a webpage, and not bothering to persist the fact that you already closed it 10 times is easier than saving that preference and checking it.
If you want people to consider doing it the nicer way you have to make it just as easy.
I think the answer is no: smart banners only increased the pop-over spam, and adding a smart banner is pretty much free, it's a single line to add to a header and is guaranteed to only trigger on the relevant / target population. A hand-rolled version not only is significantly more expensive to implement but it will misfire and lose visitors.
> There's an add to home screen button, but it's buried deep in the share sheet and the average user doesn't know about it.
What? It's a single tap to open the share sheet and the button is in the system row "above the fold" (because there aren't even enough items for anything to even be below the fold). If that's "buried deep" I'd shudder to know what you think of uninstalling an application or adding a keyboard.
We already have a "X company has an app" banner API on iOS, it seems fitting that webapps have an option to match.
And the Safari provided "X company has an app" banner is a lot less annoying than any third party "HEY WHY AREN'T YOU USING OUR APP" banners in that it goes away when you scroll down instead of being fixed to the top of your screen. If a native feature can keep people from making a shittier version and sticking it all over, then I vote yes.