Web Apps vs. Store Apps

As more PSA/web apps have started to appear in the Windows Store for popular services like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, Twitter/X, and so on, I’ve noticed an annoying issue: if I then happen to visit those sites in the browser (I happen to use Edge, but whatever), I’m still prompted to “install the site as an app”. Or in some cases, maybe I already had the web app installed before I decided to install the store version (which again, is really just the same web app). Regardless, I now have duplicate apps on my Start menu. Sure, I can delete one, but typically they look identical, so I just end up removing them both and starting over again. I’ve noticed that the Edge PWA version typically includes a “search in sidebar” function that the store versions don’t, but that probably just comes down to which flavor of the Edge web view/rendering engine they’re using.

You’d think it’d be easy enough for Windows to understand that the Facebook web app and Facebook store app, for instance, are the same thing and to either intelligently combine/replace one with the other or at least stop prompting me to install them both.