📲 Install the App — User Guide

1. What you get

Installing puts a Gujaratmitra icon on your device, next to your other apps. Nothing is downloaded from an app store and the app is the same Gujaratmitra you are reading now, with the same account and the same saved items.

2. The offer appears by itself

A moment after the page settles, a small card appears at the bottom of the screen inviting you to install the app. This happens on phones, tablets and computers — on a desktop you get exactly the same benefits, so the option is offered there too.

• Install — the browser shows its own confirmation; accept it and the app is added to your device.
• Not now — the card closes for this visit only. It comes back the next time you open the site, because declining to look at the card is not the same as saying you never want the app.
• The card never covers an article: it is pinned to the bottom edge, and pressing Esc closes it.

The one thing that changes the offer is installing the app. Nothing else — not closing the card, not the browser's own dialog — can make it disappear from a device that does not have Gujaratmitra. Once the app is installed, the card stops asking you to install it and starts offering to open the app instead (section 3), and the Install App button is no longer shown. Inside the app itself, neither offer appears at all.

One exception, and it is not you being ignored: in a private or incognito window neither offer appears — not the card, not the Install App button. A private window cannot install an app; that is the browser's own rule and there is no setting on this site that changes it. Open the site in an ordinary window when you want to install Gujaratmitra.

This holds in every browser — Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox alike. In a private window the browser itself tells the site that it will not keep an app on the device, and the site takes that answer rather than guessing: it simply does not offer something that could not work. If you happened to see the Install App button in a private Firefox window before, that was a fault on our side and it is fixed; nothing you did caused it.

3. Opening a page in the app

Once Gujaratmitra is installed, a page you open in an ordinary browser tab offers to continue in the app. It is the same card as before, with a different offer:

• Open the app — continues in the installed app, at exactly the same place: the same story, the same page, the same filters or city you had chosen.
• Not now — the card closes for this visit only, and returns the next time you open the site in a browser.

When the page opens in the app, your reading place is kept — you are not returned to the home page, and nothing you had set on that page is lost.

Inside the app there is nothing to install and nothing to open, so neither offer ever appears there. The card only exists for a page being read in a browser tab.

On a computer, this works in Chrome and Edge. Tapping Open the app hands the page to the installed app, which opens on the story you were reading. The first time, the browser asks whether this site may open the app — choose Open (or Allow) once, and it will not ask again. Your browser tab stays where it was, so you can close it.

Elsewhere the browser opens the same page in a tab instead. That is expected: Safari and Firefox on a computer, and phone browsers, do not support this hand-off, and it is the browser's rule rather than a setting on this site. Nothing is lost — the page is the one you were reading, with its filters and city intact.

The app's own icon opens the app on every device, and it is the one route that never depends on the browser's decision: the icon on your home screen, in your app list, or in the Start menu. On a phone there is a second route worth knowing. If a link to this site reaches you from somewhere else — a chat message, an email, another app — and you tap it there, the phone hands it to the installed app. If that opens the browser instead, your phone has not been asked to send this site's links to the app; the icon still works, and nothing has gone wrong.

4. Installing on a phone or tablet

1. Open the site and wait for the install card, or tap Install App in the menu.
2. Tap Install on the card, and confirm in the browser's own dialog.
3. The Gujaratmitra icon appears on your home screen. Open it like any other app.

iPhone and iPad

iOS does not let a website open an install dialog, so no Install button is offered there. The card explains the gesture instead:

1. Tap the Share icon in Safari's toolbar.
2. Choose Add to Home Screen.
3. Confirm the name, then tap Add.

5. Installing on a computer

1. Open the site. The install card appears at the bottom just as it does on a phone.
2. Choose Install, or use the browser's own install icon in the address bar if you prefer.
3. The app opens in its own window and can be pinned to your taskbar or dock like any other program.

The Install App button is always there — in the header beside the help and notification icons, and in the phone menu — for as long as the app is not installed and your browser is able to install it. It is the surest way in, whether or not the card happens to be on screen. In a private or incognito window the browser cannot install anything, so neither the button nor the card is offered there (section 2).

6. Reading without a connection

Every page you open is kept on your device, together with the page you first arrived on — so a story you reached from a shared link is still there when the signal drops.

When you open something that was never saved, you get an offline notice instead of a blank screen. It is shown in the language you were reading: an English reader sees the English notice, a Hindi reader the Hindi one, and so on. Two buttons are on it — Home takes you to the front page of that language, and Retry loads the page again once you have a connection.

The notice also appears when the site itself is reachable but the newsroom is not. In that case the pages you already opened keep working, and anything you have not opened shows the notice with the Retry button.

7. The Windows widget

On Windows the app can also place a small card on the Windows widgets board — the panel that opens from the taskbar. The card carries the Gujaratmitra name and two buttons, તાજા સમાચાર and ઈ-પેપર, so the front page and the e-paper are one tap away without opening the app first.

1. Install the app on a Windows computer (section 5).
2. Open the widgets board and choose Add widgets.
3. Pick ગુજરાતમિત્ર from the list of available widgets.

The card keeps itself up to date in the background. If ગુજરાતમિત્ર is not offered in the list, this version of Windows or of your browser does not support app widgets yet — nothing is broken, and the app itself behaves exactly as described above.

8. Removing the app

• Phone or tablet — press and hold the icon, then choose Remove or Uninstall.
• Computer — open the app, use the browser's own menu, and choose Uninstall (or remove it from your installed apps list in system settings).

Removing the app does not delete your Gujaratmitra account or your saved articles; open the site in a browser and everything is still there. If you remove it, the install offer may appear again the next time you visit.

Troubleshooting