Periodic Background API

Lets you run specific tasks at custom intervals, like a cronjob but in your browser.

Useful to provide a seamless and fast web experience

Use Cases:

• Prefetch changed contents on the page without any action from user, for faster reloading/refresh; Can also use to update offline cache
• Retrieve and batch notifications for UI

Some Limitations:

• The API is only usable in a progressive web app (PWA)
• Can only run the code in your service worker. You might need to use a postMessage to communicate with client/window

How to use:

1. Request permissions
2. Once granted, register a sync with an interval
3. Add an event listener for the custom sync event to trigger the action

More reading

▶️ https://wicg.github.io/periodic-background-sync/

▶️ https://web.dev/periodic-background-sync/