WeChat’s App Within an App: Free At Last From Endless Installing and Deleting?

Let’s face it, we’ve all found ourselves trapped this loop: we install a certain app whenever the need arises, run out of space two weeks later, and with long and thorough deliberation, finally decide which ones get to stay, and which ones have to go (to make room for selfies)–only to be eventually installed again later.

Soon, WeChat users may be finally emancipated from such a never ending cycle of installing and deleting. Starting Thursday midnight, Tencent’s increasingly encompassing WeChat has been sending out beta invites for its long-anticipated Miniapp functions. These are essentially web apps embedded inside the WeChat app that you can find and use without installing bulky applications on your phone.

So how will these nifty web apps be accessed through WeChat’s app? Tencent published a 6 second sneak-peek video, where one lucky invitee entered a screenful of Miniapp icons after tapping the newly added “Miniapp” bar under the “Discover” tab. The user in the video opened a stock trading Miniapp, showing real-time stock quotes. According to Tencent the APIs creators can work with include videos, GPS, data cache, log-on, graphs, and of course, WeChat pay.

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