Determinist // Devlog 13 // 2026.09.25.

Quite a few issues, but apparently it works…

Progressive Web App

Well, making Determinist a PWA certainly took way longer than expected. I thought it would be an hour at most, I mean Next.js literally has a guide that tells me what to do step-by-step. It was in fact NOT easy. I encountered a ton of problems.

First off, I had to write a manifest which had the app name, icons etc., the obvious things. What was not obvious however was that I had multiple ways of doing that. I could write a JSON file, or write a JavaScript file that exports an object. I chose the latter as it was the version that the Next.js guide was using.

Then came the icons. Oh, the icons. I made my icons and put it in the public/ directory with the correct names so that they match the manifest. Cool, works when I share it but there is no icon when I add it to my home screen on my iPhone. It said I’m missing a file called apple-touch-icon and apple-touch-icon-precomposed. Cool, I duplicated the icons and I renamed them. No 404s, but it still did not work. I look for a solution. For hours. I look at Next.js docs, YouTube, StackOverflow, Reddit, GitHub issues and there is nothing that would fix it. Finally, I found out I need to link the icon in the head of the website. Great, but still doesn’t work. Turns out, the problem was that I was following the Next.js guide which told me to use HTTPS to test the PWA, but iOS does not trust self-signed keys so it did not download the icon.

After that, the generation broke when I was connecting to the site with the IP and not through localhost. I noticed that submitting (pressing the generate button) redirected me which should not have happened due to the line e.preventDefault(). Then I saw Next.js attempting to connect a websocket, and a bunch of 403 errors that weren’t there before. I spent quite a bit of time debugging that, and it was due to not adding my IP to allowedDevOrigins in the next.config.mjs file despite it working perfectly fine before.

The Icon

As you can see, the image I decided to include in my devlog is the icon for Determinist. I actually did not think of putting the D and the E together at first, but when I did, it reminded me of a lock (hope you can see it!) and I chose to keep it as it kind of fits. And I didn’t want a solid color background, so I decided I’ll just add the name repeating. It was fun making it, and it was also a very good way to practice using Illustrator.

What’s next?

• Making the PWA work offline
• Bug fixes
• Descriptions
• Preset Generator
• Auto Copy to Clipboard toggle