The Google Photos website has been converted to a Progressive Web App (PWA) so that it can be installed on Chromebooks and other PCs.

Google hasn’t formally announced this release, but it was spotted by a Twitter user. I first read about it on Android Police.

I don’t believe that the Google Photos PWA can replace the Google Photos app on Android or iOS. It can’t automatically back up your phone-based photos, for example, and that must be the primary use case for the app on mobile. So I can only assume that the primary purpose of this PWA is the desktop.

Today, that means Chromebooks. But if you enable the PWA features hidden in Chrome 67 on Windows or Mac, you can also install Google Photos on those systems. And now I’m curious if this app will appear in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 too. (Google could specifically allow or disallow this, but I’m curious if anyone knows how to check.)

In any event, this PWA conversion is good news. Google is known to be porting many of its flagship websites to PWAs, but I don’t believe it ever specifically mentioned Google Photos. And it provides a nice addition to what is still a very short list of first-class PWAs. With Twitter being the only other major web service that is officially represented.