The mobile app

The Mobile Apps plugin gives the site an app in three forms: a web app members install from the browser in one tap, and complete Android and iPhone projects of your own app for the stores.

The web app (ready at once)

As soon as the plugin is on, members can install the site from the browser: it gets its own icon on the home screen, opens full screen, shows your bottom tabs and has a page for when the phone is offline. Nothing needs to be built.

• Android phones and computers with Chrome or Edge show an install button. Offer the app with a small banner adds a banner on phones; a visitor who closes it is left alone for a week.
• iPhones install it through Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen. The Get the app page (/app) explains it step by step.

Phones only install a web app from an https:// address.

The App builder

Admin → Plugin pages → Mobile Apps. The phone on the right shows the real site and follows what you type. Save the app makes it so for everyone.

• Name, Short name (under the icon, 12 letters at most) and One sentence about the app.
• Icon: a square PNG, 512 pixels or larger. Every size the phones and the stores ask for is made from it.
• Theme colour (the bar at the top of the phone), Background and Splash colour (behind the icon while the app opens).
• Start page: / is the home feed, or for example /videos.
• Orientation: follows the phone, upright only, or sideways only.
• Bottom tabs: up to five, each with a name, an icon and an address. #menu opens the side menu. Hide the top bar in the app gives the pages more room.

Android and iPhone projects

The Build tab makes the store apps from what the App builder holds now.

Android

Download the Android project: a complete Android Studio project in Kotlin. The app is your site in a frame, with the file picker for uploads, the camera and the microphone, full-screen video, pull to refresh, an offline page, and links to your site that open in the app.

• Package ID: like com.yoursite.app. It names the app in the stores; never change it after publishing. Version: raise it for every new package you publish.
• No Android Studio? Put the files in a GitHub repository. Its workflow builds the APK on GitHub. Download app-debug.apk from the run.
• For Google Play add a signing key as the README-BUILD.md inside explains.
• Upload the APK under APK for members, and members can download it from Get the app. Add your Google Play link once the app is in the store.

iPhone

Download the iPhone project: a Swift project for XcodeGen with the same features. On a Mac: brew install xcodegen, xcodegen generate, open the project in Xcode, pick your team, run. Without a Mac, the GitHub workflow in the project builds it.

The App Store needs an Apple Developer account. Until then iPhone members use Add to Home Screen. Add your App Store link when the app is published.

When you change something in the App builder, the web app updates by itself. Download the projects again for the stores.

Sign in on a computer with the phone

With Sign in on a computer by scanning a code on, the sign-in page on a computer shows a QR code. A member who is signed in on the phone opens Scan in the app (or /app/scan), scans it and approves; the computer is signed in. The code lasts a few minutes and works once.

Inside the app

Pages know when they run inside the app and leave out what the app already offers (the install banner, for example). Calls, uploads and the camera work as they do in the browser, so HTTPS is required for them too.