Minimized Mini Apps

[deodad]

A common challenge with Mini App interactions is that a user wants to take an action within their Farcaster client without losing their app session. A couple examples:

• when looking at a leaderboard within an app, a user wants to view the profile of a user
• an app wants a user to swap token using the built in wallet functionality
• an app wants a user to compose a cast but then return to the app
• a user wants to leave an app open since there is something ongoing in it (i.e. audio stream, chat) but continue scrolling

A docked mode where a user could temporarily minimize an mini app without losing their session and return to it after either completing some action (i.e. sending a cast) or by manually expanding it would enable all the use cases above. Some actions like compose cast or swap will have a clear end where Farcaster clients can return control the Mini App whereas others like View Profile may require the user to return manually.

Potential SDK Impact

• new client event for when an app is docked / undocked
• update the viewProfile action to take an optional parameter indicating if this should close the app or not
• new actions could use a similar option where the mini app can indicate whether the action should close the app or leave it docked / return control after the action is over

Prior Art
Telegram supports a mode like this. How does it work?

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Update - 4/10/25
Warpcast added support for minimized apps.

[pugson]

Instead of docking it to the bottom and needing to rewrite the navigation stack and tabs, what if it was a floating button on the left side above the tab bar?

Similar to the purple 'new cast' button but instead showing the Mini App's icon.

Tapping on it would bring up the Webview with the Mini App again.

[jpfraneto]

this made me think of this as a playback component for a radio for example

[deodad]

I like that. We've also been looking at the Spotify Now Playing UX for inspiration. Could see letting apps hook into media controls or at least be able to update basic text / icon. This is a quick prototype made by @Slokh but we'll have our designer explore more options.

[cryptods8]

awesome! are you considering letting the mini app have control over the docked state ui? e.g. "spaces" mini app could show playback controls…

[deodad]

We've also been looking at the Spotify Now Playing UX for inspiration. Could see letting apps hook into media controls or at least be able to update basic text / icon.

Yes that could be cool though we'd likely start with something basic first.

[chejazi]

I think minimizing the app is undesirable UX from an app dev perspective. Devs don't want their app minimized - if anything I'd say app devs want the frames as presented today to be harder to close. Its very easy to accidentally hit X currently. Anyone building something immersive (farcade?) would probably also opt for a more full-screen experience.

I'm more supportive of sdk functions to call specific actions like "show profile" or "cast" that get rendered as modals on top of the frame.

[deodad]

The problem of users accidentally closing the app feels orthogonal to this one and addressed by disableNativeGestures. This doesn't make it any easy / harder for a user to close an app, it just allows the app to go backgrounded in places where previously it would've ended the session.

[maggo]

Telegram has a couple different ways to link from a mini app:

• openLink: opens in external browser, mini app stays open inside of TG
• openLink with try_instant_view=true: Opens in in-app browser, mini app stays open in the background
• openTelegramLink: navigates to a screen inside of TG, mini app gets docked

Docs: https://core.telegram.org/bots/webapps#initializing-mini-apps

Some mini app screen behaviors:

• Apps can be "almost fullscreen"
• User can swipe down to show the screen behind it
• User can swipe down even more to dock

[deodad]

great reference—thank you!

[benadamsky]

Excited about this one, seems like a necessary step if we want more social interoperability in mini apps.

Current social features in the sdk like the view profile widget are underwhelming since the social elements are confined to viewing basic metadata and follow/unfollow. It ends up feeling detached from the experience of using farcaster and limits a lot of the cool use cases of having a mini app within the context of a social graph.

"Docking" an embedded view makes the mini app <> in-feed experience a lot more seamless even for simple flows like mint -> share -> back to mini app. Not having that third step means near-instant drop off as soon as a user is sent to their feed.

An interesting future idea to explore is passively triggering the docking state (eg a March madness game has started so Bracket Game triggers a docked view with game stats). This creates a tougher balance with third party apps but there's a lot of surface area to explore overall.

[deodad]

Shipped in Warpcast. Hopefully other clients will follow suite. No changes for app devs at this point.

[sirpy]

Hey. What is the status of openUrl?
Is it possible to open links in the device browser(mobile) or in a new tab (desktop)?
The issue we are facing is that we have an identity verification flow that requires camera access, on mobile android it seems camera definitions are not fully compatible with our requirements and on browser since it is in iframe it also doesnt work as theres no way to enable camera.
The best options is to open the link to the verification in a new tab/native browser, is that possible?