Easy Smart App Banner

An Easy Smart App Banner for promoting mobile app installs based on the Safari Apple Experience.

This isn't for everyone. Most people should probably prefer the PWA approach. However, if you need a 'simple' banner that redirects to a native mobile app then keep reading.

For Safari support see Safari Support. For specific details on iOS and Safari, read here. Likewise for Android see here.

Features

• Typescript support
• Standalone/Frameworkless
• Small! 14.48 kB │ gzip: 4.43 kB │ map: 44.87 kB
• Platform specific
  • custom banner for iOS (non-Safari) and Android user agents
  • Safari specific config See Safari Support
• Option, use SCSS/Sass variables to configure the banner as needed
• Cookie-based dismissal, dismiss once per browser

Install

npm i -S @easy-smart-app-banner/core

Configuration

See the options model.

Safari Support

This libary currently excludes Safari, as it is not possible to support Safari via a library/plugin/etc. Support for the native Safari smart app banner MUST be provided via static meta tags in your site directly. Safari currently only supports parsing this metadata immediately on page load and will not parse any metadata added after this point. If you want to natively include the Safari banner, then read on here.

Advanced Usage

Platform Specific Overrides

Several options have platform specific overrides. These take precedence over any equivalent option when running on the relevant platform.

For specific details on iOS and Safari specifically, read here. For Android see here.

Icon

A single icon is typical, but specific ones can be configured.

{
    icon: '/assets/my-icon.jpeg',
    androidIcon: null,
    appleIcon: null,
}

Price

The price tagline defaults to FREE with platform specific defaults for both Android and iOS platforms.

{
    price: 'FREE',
    androidPrice: 'FREE - On the Google Play Store',
    applePrice: 'GET - On the App Store'
}

Call to Action Button Label

{
    buttonLabel: 'View',
    androidButtonLabel: null,
    appleButtonLabel: null
}

SCSS/Sass Variables

Styles can be overriden using the provided SCSS/Sass variables. See the variables.

You can provide these styles as needed by using the .scss files instead,

@use '@easy-smart-app-banner/core/variables.scss' as *;

// overwrite as needed
$background-color: #000;

Platform Specific Plugins

Looking for a platform that isn't here? Propose a PR to add it!

• Vue 3 Plugin

Testing if your User Agent (UA) String is Valid

UA strings are a dime a dozen, that's why in verbose mode (see Configuration), the platform parsing utility is exposed to the window object for easy testing. In your browser console,

const myUa = window.navigator.userAgent;
getCurrentPlatform(myUa)

This is especially useful when debugging known UA strings that may not be supported. If you think a particular UA should be supported, open a pull request!

Development

To get started, pull the repo and run a build as well as the tests. Development needs Node 22 or later (the current LTS lines).

don't forget to run npm i!

npm run build
npm run test

You can checkout the rest of the commands in the package.json.

The next step would be to boot a demo project. Checkout the Vue demo here.

Publish a Release

Core and the Vue plugin are released together with the same version.

1. Checkout a new branch release/major.minor.patch
2. Set the new version in the root package.json and in plugins/vue-plugin/package.json (npm version <version> --no-git-tag-version in each, which also updates the lockfiles)
3. Update the README's as needed (bump the size note)
4. Publish the branch and merge the PR
5. Run the Publish Packages to npmjs workflow manually with dry-run enabled (the default) and check it passes
6. Create a GitHub release from master with the tag vmajor.minor.patch. The workflow checks the tag against both package versions, then publishes core followed by the plugin, both with provenance. The plugin is built against the core version just published, and its @easy-smart-app-banner/core range is set to that version in the published package.
7. In a follow-up PR, set the plugin's @easy-smart-app-banner/core range to the new version (npm install @easy-smart-app-banner/core@^major.minor.patch in plugins/vue-plugin), and bump the demo.

Licence

MIT License © 2025-PRESENT Albert Ferguson