Your Family Tree on a Phone: Using NASAB as a PWA
Short Answer
NASAB can be installed on a phone's home screen as an app without going through the Play Store or App Store. It runs as a PWA — opening like an ordinary app, sending notifications, and showing content you have already viewed even when the connection drops.
Most of the work of recording a lineage happens far away from a computer: at the village house, at a feast, at the cemetery, sitting beside an elder who is telling a story.
That is why NASAB is built to be installed on a phone.
An app without an app store
NASAB is a Progressive Web App (PWA). It installs straight from the browser, without going through the Play Store or the App Store:
- Android (Chrome): open the site, tap the three-dot menu, choose "Add to Home screen"
- iPhone (Safari): open the site, tap the Share button, choose "Add to Home Screen"
Once installed it has its own icon and opens without the browser address bar — just like a downloaded app.
Why a PWA rather than a native app
- One version for everyone. No Android build sitting three updates behind the iOS one.
- Updates arrive immediately. No download, no waiting for app store approval.
- No large amount of storage needed. That matters for the older phones still in use by the older generation in the family.
The scan hub
The scan screen on the phone handles five kinds of QR code: family, member, event, document and invitation code. The camera opens, the code is scanned, and the system takes you straight to the right place — with no need to choose the type of code first.
This is what makes QR codes useful at a gathering: a guest scans a name tag and immediately sees that person's place in the family tree, without having to learn anything.
When the connection drops
The village house and the cemetery are two places where coverage easily disappears. Content already opened stays visible while the connection is down. Changes that need saving still require a connection — a lineage record cannot be saved halfway.
Notifications
Push notifications work on Android and on iPhones running iOS 16.4 or later, provided the app has been added to the home screen. One account with five devices remains a single target — you do not receive the same notification five times.
What to check if installation fails
- On iPhone, installation only works through Safari, not Chrome
- Private browsing mode does not allow installation
- If the "Add to Home screen" option does not appear, reload the page once
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