meta name="application-name"

<meta name="application-name" content="Example Mail"> names the web application a page belongs to, as opposed to the page itself. It is not a vendor invention or a relic: it is a current standard metadata name in the HTML Standard. Internet Explorer 11 made it popular as the name on a pinned-site tile, and favicon generators have emitted it on every page ever since.

Why avoid

This rule is about redundancy, not validity. The HTML Standard defines the value as “a short free-form string giving the name of the web application that the page represents”, and lets user agents show it “in preference to the page’s title”, since a title can carry transient status like an unread count.

The standard also scopes it narrowly: “If the page is not a web application, the application-name metadata name must not be used.” Most pages carrying it are ordinary documents, blog posts and marketing pages, where a generator put it. For them the tag is non-conforming as used.

For pages that really are applications, the web app manifest has taken the job. Its name and short_name members name the installed app in every browser that installs web apps, and short_name gives the space-constrained form that a single content string can’t. A site that ships both states the app’s name twice, in two files, and the two drift.

Who still reads it: Chromium’s renderer extracts application-name into page metadata, alongside description and mobile-web-app-capable, which the browser can draw on when a page is installed or saved as a shortcut without a manifest. Internet Explorer 11 used it for pinned-site tiles, a feature with no reader left (see meta/msapplication). Nothing else was found.

It isn’t the same thing as application-title, a newer Chromium and Edge metadata name that sets the title-bar text of an installed app. This rule doesn’t touch that one, and neither replaces the other.

Use instead

For an installable app, the manifest:

<link rel="manifest" href="/app.webmanifest">

{ "name": "Example Mail", "short_name": "Mail" }

For a page that isn’t an app, nothing: <title> already names it.

Detectability

Fully detectable. <meta name> holds a single value, not a token set, so the selector uses = with the i flag. The standard compares the name ASCII case-insensitively. A page may carry one per language via lang, and each is reported.

The fix removes the element unconditionally. On a page with a manifest name, that changes nothing. On a page with no manifest, Chromium’s install or shortcut flow may now propose the page’s <title> where it would have used this name. That is the manifest’s job to settle, so add one rather than keep the tag.

Resources

• HTML Standard — standard metadata names: application-name — the definition, the “must not be used” rule for pages that aren’t web applications, and the allowance to prefer it over <title>.
• W3C — Web Application Manifest: name member — the standard home for an installable application’s name, with short_name alongside it.
• Chromium — components/webapps/renderer/web_page_metadata_extraction.cc — reads application-name into the page metadata Chromium’s web app code consumes.
• Microsoft Learn — Pinned Sites (Internet Explorer), archived — application-name as the IE11 pinned-site name, the other historical reader.