The Sorry Card App

It adds an icon to your home screen that opens the card maker in its own window, with no browser bars, no address field, and no tabs.

Underneath it is the same site, which is why it installs in seconds and updates itself. You never download a new version.

The technology is a progressive web app. That name matters less than what it means in practice: an app you install from a web page rather than a store.

Nothing is downloaded to a store account, nothing asks for permissions, and removing it is the same as deleting any other icon.

Three taps, and one thing that catches people out.

Open the site in Safari. This is the part that catches people: Safari is the only iPhone browser that installs web apps. If you are reading this in Chrome, open it in Safari first.

Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen. It is the square with an arrow pointing up.

Scroll down the share sheet and tap Add to Home Screen.

Tap Add. The icon appears with your other apps immediately.

From then on it opens full screen with no Safari interface at all.

Chrome usually offers a button. If it does, use it.

The app page shows an Install button when your browser supports one-tap install. Tapping it adds the icon and finishes in a second or two.

If no button appears, open the browser menu, usually three dots in the corner, and choose Install app or Add to Home screen.

Chrome decides when to offer the one-tap version based on how often you have visited. Visiting once or twice usually makes it appear.

Samsung Internet, Firefox, and Edge all support this too, with the option sitting in the same menu.

Chrome and Edge both install web apps on desktop, and it is worth doing if you make cards regularly.

Look for an install icon in the address bar, usually a small screen with a downward arrow. Click it and confirm.

The card maker then opens in its own window from your taskbar or dock, separate from your browser tabs.

The desktop version has one practical advantage: the card preview sits beside the controls rather than below them, so you see changes as you make them.

Printing is also easier from desktop, since the PDF export goes straight to a connected printer.

The first visit needs a connection so your browser can cache the app. After that, most of it works with no signal.

Themes, colour palettes, colour pickers, card shapes, fonts, text sizes, borders, patterns, stickers, and the signature all run on your device.

Writing the message works offline, and so does the message library of twelve written examples.

Export works offline. PNG, JPG, and PDF are all generated in your browser rather than on a server.

The AI writer is the exception. It needs a connection because the model runs remotely. Everything else is unaffected if it is unavailable.

Under a megabyte, which surprises people used to app store downloads.

A native app ships its own copy of everything: interface framework, rendering engine, and often assets for screen sizes you will never use. That is where the hundreds of megabytes go.

A web app uses the browser you already have for all of that. What gets stored is the code specific to this tool, which is small because the tool does one thing.

There are no bundled fonts to download, since the one custom font loads once and caches. There are no images, because the entire interface is drawn with CSS.

The practical result is that installing costs you less space than a single photo.

Identical to the website, because it is the website.

Cards are generated in your browser. The names you type and the message you write are never uploaded and never stored.

There is no account, so there is nothing to sign into and nothing to leak.

The app requests no permissions. It does not ask for contacts, photos, location, or notifications, because it does not use any of them.

The one exception is the optional AI writer, which sends the situation you describe to a model and stores nothing. Everything else stays on the device.

The same as any other app, and nothing is left behind.

On iPhone, press and hold the icon and choose Delete. On Android, press and hold and drag to Uninstall.

On desktop Chrome or Edge, open the app, click the three dots in its window, and choose Uninstall.

Because nothing was stored, there is no account to close, no data to request, and no residue on your device beyond the cached files your browser clears automatically.

The website keeps working afterwards. Removing the icon does not remove your access to anything.

Installing is not necessary, and there are cases where it adds nothing.

If you are apologizing once, the browser is fine. The install exists for people who reach for this more than occasionally.

If you are on someone else's device, do not install. Use the site directly and close the tab.

If your phone is nearly full, the app is under a megabyte, but a browser tab is zero.

Everything works identically either way. The only difference is how many taps stand between you and a finished card.

The difference matters less than it used to, and the tradeoffs are worth knowing.

An app store app can use hardware features a web app cannot reach, and it appears in store search results. Neither matters for a card maker.

A web app installs in seconds with no download queue, takes almost no space, updates silently, and asks for no permissions. All four matter here.

The honest disadvantage is discoverability. Nobody browses for web apps, so you have to already be on the site to install it.

For a tool people reach for occasionally and urgently, that tradeoff is the right way round.

There is no account, so nothing syncs. That is a deliberate tradeoff rather than a missing feature.

A saved draft lives in the browser on the device you saved it on. Opening the app on a different phone will not show it.

If you need a card on two devices, export it and send yourself the file. That takes a few seconds and requires no account anywhere.

The alternative would be storing your names and apology text on a server so it could sync, which is the thing this site avoids.

Install it on whichever device you would actually reach for in the moment. For most people that is one phone.

The app sends no notifications, and this is intentional.

A tool for apologizing has no reason to interrupt you. There is nothing to remind you about that you do not already know.

It does not run in the background, does not track usage, and does not collect an identifier.

It also does not share cards, host links, or animate. Those are website limitations and they carry over to the installed version.

What it does is open a card maker in one tap and work without a signal. That is the whole feature set.

Four things account for almost every failed install.

You are in Chrome on iPhone. Only Safari installs web apps on iOS. Open the page in Safari and try again.

The install button has not appeared on Android. Chrome offers it based on visit history, so open the site again in a few minutes or use the browser menu instead.

You are in a private or incognito window. Installing is disabled there by design.

It is already installed. Check your home screen before trying again, since a second install does nothing.