Serviceworker: Service workers registration lifetime

[lewispham]

I'm still unclear about the lifetime of a service worker's registration. What is its exact lifetime? In other words, how long can a registration remain alive without an update? Will a service worker permanently work without internet access after its very first registration?

[jungkees]

A registration persists unless it's unregistered: https://slightlyoff.github.io/ServiceWorker/spec/service_worker/index.html#service-worker-registration-lifetime

Every navigation tries an update but if it keeps failing the registration's active worker is used until an update is succeeded.

[annevk]

I think the one caveat though is that to get it truly persisted you also need to get https://storage.spec.whatwg.org/. Since we store registrations in the same box that localStorage and such go and those can go away under constraints.

[wanderview]

And a user can always bypass the service worker with a hard refresh. Or wipe origin storage themselves, etc.

[lewispham]

Thank you all for your very clear responses. They do help me a lot.