The news app that took one evening

“And of course we could offer everyone a news app to download — but is that really the added value? Or would it just be a glorious power move?”

That question came at the end of a long Saturday on which our website had gained a ticker: an automated trail of our own posts, security patches across our server stack, and finds from our automated press review. The honest answer to both halves of the question is: no — and yes. Which is exactly why we built it.

The value already existed

By that point, anyone who wanted our updates could get them any way they liked: on the ticker page itself, via RSS in a feed reader, as a newsletter in four flavours — per post, per short note, daily or weekly — or through our accounts on the Fediverse and Bluesky. News the way you want them. An app adds nothing to the content.

So why build one anyway? Because it cost almost nothing — and that is the story.

What an “app without an app store” is

The technical term is Progressive Web App — PWA. The idea is simple: an ordinary website tells the phone, in a small description file, that it can also behave like an app — with its own icon on the home screen, its own window without the browser bar, and a tiny background program that keeps the latest content available for offline moments.

This is not future tech. Every modern phone has understood it for years.

In the end, our “app” consisted of three things: the description file (about fifteen lines), two icon sizes generated from our existing logo, and a script of roughly thirty lines for the offline case. No developer account with Apple or Google, no review process, no thirty percent cut to a store, no update cycle — the app is the website, and the website belongs to us.

The actual punchline

The power move is not that we have an app. It is how cheap it was — and what that says about the rest of that evening.

Built the same day: the ticker page with day grouping and filters, the RSS mirror of the feed, two new newsletter lists with sign-up on every page, and the fix that gives every item its real source timestamp instead of one batch stamp. The app was the smallest item on that list.

That is not because we are wizards. It is because the foundation is right: the content exists as open data (a feed anyone can subscribe to), the website is static and ours from server to source code, and an AI agent works through the mechanics while we make the decisions. If you own your platform, a feature takes an evening. If you rent it, you file a ticket.

Staying honest

Two things we say openly. First: for most readers, RSS or the newsletter remains the better path — an app needs installing, a feed takes one click. The app is an offer for people who want news on their home screen, not a replacement for everything else. Second: a PWA cannot do everything a store app can — push notifications, for instance, are limited depending on the device. A ticker that curates twice a day and refreshes every fifteen minutes does not need them.

If you want to try it: open analytikdata.ch/ticker on your phone — Android shows an “install app” button, on the iPhone it is “Share → Add to Home Screen”. And if you are wondering what an evening like this would mean for your company: that is exactly the conversation we enjoy.