Turning Pinterest into a standalone app on macOS

Searching for a Pinterest desktop app from a Mac produces a strange result set. There is a store listing that installs in one click, except it is the Microsoft Store and the click does nothing on macOS. There is an App Store listing, except it is for the phone. There are download mirrors repackaging the Windows build. The pattern is consistent: Pinterest does publish a desktop application, and it publishes it for the other operating system.

What Pinterest does publish for the Mac is more interesting than it first looks, and it is not what most people expect.

What Pinterest publishes, and for which computer

The Windows app is real. It is listed in the Microsoft Store by Pinterest Inc., it is free, and it is filed under Social. That single listing is what most of the search results ultimately point at.

On the Mac, a search of the Mac App Store for software published by Pinterest, Inc. returns exactly one item, and it is not a Pinterest client. It is a Safari extension called Save to Pinterest, which requires macOS 11 or later and does the one job its name describes.

It's easier than ever to save and organize the ideas you like from all over the web with the Save to Pinterest extension. With just a few clicks, you can keep track of all the tasty recipes, style inspiration, DIY projects and other ideas you want to try. Source: apps.apple.com

The mobile app closes the last door. Its App Store listing states compatibility with iPhone requiring iOS 16.0 or later, iPad, and Apple Vision. There is no Mac line, which is the entry that would allow the iPad version to be installed on an Apple silicon Mac the way a handful of other business apps can be. Without it, that route is unavailable.

So the honest summary is that Pinterest on a Mac means pinterest.com, and the only question left is what kind of window it opens in.

The extension is not the app, and it is still worth installing

Save to Pinterest deserves its own paragraph because it solves a different problem from the one this search is usually about, and it solves it well. Saving an image found on some unrelated site normally means copying a URL, switching to Pinterest, opening the create flow and pasting. The extension collapses that into a click from wherever the page already is.

There is a detail in Apple's documentation that makes the extension more useful than it sounds, once other sites start getting windows of their own. A web app created through Safari keeps a streamlined toolbar, and Apple states that toolbar carries buttons related to any Safari extensions that are installed. The save button therefore travels: a recipe site, a furniture retailer or a gallery that has been given its own window still has the Pinterest save button sitting in the corner of that window.

The extension does not, however, give Pinterest itself a place in the Dock. For that, the site needs a window.

The routes to pinterest.com, compared

Route	Setup	Sign in state	Notifications	Fits
Browser tab	Nothing to do	Shares the browser session	Browser permission, browser must be running	Occasional browsing
Safari, Add to Dock	Two clicks, macOS Sonoma 14 or later	Its own cookie store, separate from Safari	System notifications, unread badge	One account, kept out of the browser
Chrome, Install page as app	Two clicks in Chrome	Inherits the Chrome profile it was made from	Through Chrome, which must be running	People already inside one Chrome profile
Site to app tool	A few minutes, one app per site	Its own store per app	System notifications per app	Personal and business accounts, or several sites

Apple introduced the Safari route in macOS Sonoma 14 and is direct about what separates it from a bookmark.

A web app functions independently of Safari. It shares no browsing history, cookies, website data, or settings with Safari. In this way, it keeps your browsing separate, similar to using a Safari profile. Source: support.apple.com

The steps are File then Add to Dock from the Safari menu bar, or the Share button then Add to Dock. Chrome's equivalent lives in the three dot menu under Cast, save, and share, then Install page as app, and produces a window tied to the Chrome profile it was built from.

Choosing between the two browser routes

The two browser routes look equivalent from the outside and behave differently in three ways that show up within a week.

The first is the sign in. A Chrome app opens as the account the originating Chrome profile is signed in to, because it shares that profile's storage. That is convenient when the goal is a window, and useless when the goal is a second identity. The Safari route starts empty and builds its own store, which is why it can hold an account the browser is not signed in to.

The second is whether the browser has to be running. An app installed through Chrome is Chrome, in a different frame, so quitting Chrome takes the app with it. A Safari web app stands on its own and can be set as a login item.

The third is how cleanly it comes apart. Google documents uninstalling an installed web app from its own More menu, with a checkbox to delete the app's data from Chrome at the same time, and a list of installed apps at the chrome://apps address.

On your computer, open Chrome. Go to a website you want to install. At the top right, select More, then Cast, save, and share, then Install page as app. Source: support.google.com

For Pinterest specifically, where the likely reason for wanting a window is separating a personal feed from working hours, the Safari route or a dedicated tool fits better than the Chrome one.

What changes when Pinterest has its own window

It stops competing with work tabs. Pinterest is built to hold attention, and a browser is built to put everything at the same level of access. Moving the site into its own application means opening it is a decision rather than a reflex, and closing it actually closes it. For anyone who uses Pinterest professionally, as a designer gathering references or a shop owner running boards, that separation is the whole value.

The window can be shaped around the grid. Apple's settings pane for a web app allows the name, the URL and the icon to be changed at any time, and allows the navigation controls to be hidden entirely. A Pinterest grid with no address bar, no bookmarks bar and no tab strip gives the images the full width of the window, which is closer to what the layout was designed for.

The starting view is a choice. An app built while sitting on a specific board opens on that board. A studio that works out of one collection all day can have an icon that lands there directly, instead of passing through the home feed on every launch.

It can open at login and hold a space. Apple documents that a web app can be added as a login item, and the Dock icon can be assigned to a particular desktop through its Options menu, so reference material lives on the screen reserved for reference material.

There is nothing to maintain. The window shows whatever pinterest.com is today. Removal means dragging the app from the Applications folder inside the home folder to the Trash, which is where Apple documents these apps are saved.

Notifications, and the step that gets skipped

Notification behaviour is the part where a window genuinely differs from a tab, and Apple attaches one condition to it that catches almost everyone on the first launch.

Web apps support an additional notifications feature: The number of unread notifications appears as a red badge on the app's icon in the Dock. To use this feature, respond to the website's notifications request in the web app, not in Safari. Source: support.apple.com

Whatever was answered in the browser years ago does not carry over. If the prompt is dismissed out of habit when the new window first opens, the badge will never appear and the setup will look broken. Granting it inside the app is the fix.

After that, System Settings then Notifications lists the app under the name it was given rather than under a URL, so an app named Boards appears as Boards. Focus modes apply to it like any other application, which is useful in the specific case of Pinterest: allowing it during design hours and silencing it the rest of the day is a two minute setup that a browser tab cannot offer.

A personal account and a business account, at the same time

Plenty of people run two Pinterest identities. A personal account full of recipes and a business account running product boards are different jobs, and the second one usually belongs to an employer.

One browser session holds one signed in identity at a time, so the usual arrangement is signing out and back in, or living with whichever account happens to be active and occasionally saving a pin to the wrong one. Separate cookie stores end that. Apple's comparison of a web app to a Safari profile is the mechanism: the browser keeps one account, the app in the Dock holds the other, and neither can be posted to by accident from the wrong window.

Past two identities, or once Pinterest sits alongside a shop admin, an analytics dashboard and a shared inbox, a tool that turns a website into a standalone Mac app is the consistent answer, because each app it builds keeps its own storage, name and icon. That is the arrangement described on the Features page, and the services already prepared as presets are listed under Supported services.

The rough edges to expect

A fresh sign in on the first launch. The new window carries none of the browser's cookies, so Pinterest sees a client it has never met. Expect a full sign in and any verification step the account has enabled.

Links leave the window. Clicking a pin through to the site it came from opens outside the app. That is correct behaviour and the reason to leave the Share button visible at first, since it also offers Open in Safari.

Image heavy pages are still image heavy. A window does not make an infinite grid lighter. Scrolling for a long time in a single window uses memory the same way scrolling for a long time in a tab does, and quitting the app releases it just as closing the tab would.

Chrome built apps depend on Chrome. If the plan was to close the browser and still receive notifications, the Safari route or a standalone tool is the one that matches it.

What to change first

Install Save to Pinterest from the Mac App Store, since saving from other sites is a separate problem worth solving regardless. Then open pinterest.com in Safari, use File then Add to Dock, and allow notifications from inside the new window when it asks. If both a personal and a business account need to stay open at once, build them as two apps with Kagemusha and give each one its own icon.