How to turn any website into an application for macOS

Today we can do everything via the web: check email, manage notes and tasks, calendar, save files… Over the years we have gone from having many applications open to many browser tabs open.

If you don’t like it, there are weapons to avoid it: there are ways Convert the websites we use most often into applications for macOS. Let’s see how we can achieve that, because they can completely change the way we work with our Macs.

Unite can be a good application to test these conversions From web to app. The utility is responsible for moving all executable code from the web into a native macOS container, which has its own icon in the Dock and individual customization options.

All you have to do is install the application (there’s a free demo available) and write the website you want to turn into an application:

The generated application is saved in the Applications folder along with the rest of the natively installed applications, completing the integration. Unite lets you build three apps for free, but you have to pay a $30 license fee for more.

The same company responsible for Unite has another application called Coherence X that performs the same function of building applications, but does it under a chrome tray. It may be that in certain cases where this particular browser is needed, it is the solution you are looking for.

Another alternative that’s been popular for a while is Fluid, an application that’s also free to try and has a full license for sale for $5. The problem is that it hasn’t been updated for a while, so it might not work with some of the most modern websites (in my case it took a long time to create an application for the Mastodon website).

Finally we have an easy way to turn a website into a Chrome extension that can run separately thanks to Web Applicationize. You just need to enter a URL, download the Chrome extension in CRX format and drag it to the Chrome Extensions section to launch it. It’s a pity that we’re talking more about web-based and non-native applications.

You may have gotten used to using browser tabs for everything by now, but some veterans will probably want to go back to working with more apps than websites, as was the case in the past. The important thing is that we have the choice to do it.