title: PWA: Manifest is There, but Chrome Says "No Manifest Found"?
body: <p><strong>UPDATE</strong></p>
  <p>With no changes having been made, Lighthouse has mysteriously stopped showing the &quot;No usable web app manifest found on page&quot; message and is now showing &quot;Timed out waiting for start_url to respond.&quot; That's a topic for another post of course.</p>
  <p>I do not yet know why Lighthouse stopped showing the previous error message.</p>
  <hr />
  <p>I've just added PWA features to my app for the first time. Chrome Lighthouse says &quot;No usable web app manifest found on page.&quot;</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/XqCS6.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/XqCS6.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>But the Chrome Application&gt;&gt;Manifest tool reports that the manifest.json file is there -- and even reads in the data from it:</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8YEvV.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8YEvV.jpg" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>Here's what the manifest.json file looks like:</p>
  <pre><code>{
    &quot;short_name&quot;: &quot;mySiteName&quot;,
    &quot;name&quot;: &quot;mySiteName&quot;,
    &quot;start_url&quot;: &quot;/&quot;,
    &quot;display&quot;: &quot;standalone&quot;,
    &quot;theme_color&quot;: &quot;#ffffff&quot;,
    &quot;theme-color&quot;: &quot;#ffffff&quot;,
    &quot;background_color&quot;: &quot;#000000&quot;,
    &quot;background-color&quot;: &quot;#000000&quot;,
    &quot;description&quot;: &quot;my site description&quot;,
    &quot;icons&quot;: [
      {
        &quot;src&quot;: &quot;/images/app-images/myLogo.png&quot;,
        &quot;type&quot;: &quot;image/png&quot;,
        &quot;sizes&quot;: &quot;192x192&quot;
      },
      {
        &quot;src&quot;: &quot;/images/app-images/myLogo.png&quot;,
        &quot;type&quot;: &quot;image/png&quot;,
        &quot;sizes&quot;: &quot;512x512&quot;
      }
    ]
  }
  </code></pre>
  <p>Why is Lighthouse saying the manifest.json isn't found -- when the Chrome Application&gt;&gt;Manifest tool says that it is?</p>
  <p><strong>Update:</strong></p>
  <p>A commenter asked if I'd linked the manifest in the <code>&lt;head&gt;</code>. Going to the production server and clicking <code>view source</code>, I see in the <code>&lt;head&gt;</code> tag:</p>
  <pre><code>&lt;head&gt;
      [.....]
      &lt;meta charset=&quot;utf-8&quot;&gt;
  
      &lt;meta name=&quot;robots&quot; content=&quot;noindex&quot;&gt;
      &lt;link rel=&quot;manifest&quot; href=&quot;manifest.json&quot; crossorigin=&quot;use-credentials&quot;&gt;
      &lt;meta name=&quot;viewport&quot; content=&quot;width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no&quot;&gt;
  
      &lt;noscript&gt;This site requires Javascript. Please activate JavaScript in your browser.&lt;/noscript&gt;
      [.....]
  &lt;/head&gt;
  </code></pre>
  <p>If I paste <code>https://www.mywebsite.care/manifest.json</code> into the browser, my manifest.json file comes up. So it appears that I have linked the manifest.json file in the <code>&lt;head&gt;</code> section.</p>