So here is a question that the help desk cant assist with.
Those with BDK or Nativley wrapped apps who want to use the Native editor how would we go about pushing to live and removing the BDK wrap?
You mean making changes on the natuve build?
You simply enable another rebuild and add it for review on your developer account
No, an app already on the App Store using bdk or nativley.
You want to make changes on the app and ensuring the changes reflect on the app onthe apppstore right?
There is no “easy” way to do this. You would still need to learn and create your app in the Mobile section of the editor. You can sometimes copy elements from the Web version of your page, but this has issues and not all elements are supported. You can use the Web View element to bring in your Web pages as well, but you lose the native functionality of React (but can help you get up and running more quickly). The fact of the matter, though, is that a wrapped app is not a native app and you will need to put some work in to convert it.
If I understood right, you will need the android keystore to get this done (Not sure abiut ios). If BDK and Natively give you that then you should be able to create a new build with Bubble Native and upload it.
Heyy @chaddickson83 ,
Honestly, it is not so straight forward. We were using BDK before and we switched to Bubble Native.
Challenges to note:
- App version would need to be bumped up to the version that’s already on LIVE.
- For us, our already LIVE version was at like 3.1.0. Bubble Native builds will start from 0.0.1. So you would need to essentially trigger major version builds until you get to the right version of the Live app.
- If you’re LIVE app is currently compatible with iPhone and iPad you will not be able to release a new IOS version with Bubble Native as the Bubble builds only have compatibility with iPhone.
- We had this issues, on BDK, our app was compatible with iPhone and iPad, on Bubble Native builds are only compatible with iPhone. This made us essentially create a new app id for both IOS and Android
- If you have In-app purchases you will lose this feature as Bubble Native does not support this at the moment (Coming soon)
If the challenges above can be taken care off, then you really just need to recreate your pages in Bubble Native. It works a little bit differently than the web and you would need to use different elements for certain things when using Bubble Native. It takes a while tog et used to but I think it is pretty straight forward and the documentation is really good.
If the challenges above are a bit too complicated to fix with the current version. then you can create a new app id and essentially have the version with Bubble Native as a new app. (This is the way we chose to go as it was easier to just start afresh)
But I would highly recommended to read the Bubble Native documentation so you know what can be achieved and the limitations that you might have.
Furthermore, since the plugin editor for Mobile is in BETA/ALPHA (Can’t remember exactly), if you have custom plugins that your app needs it might not be available on Bubble Native as you can’t create custom plugins for now for Bubble Native. Only a selected few can. (However, the ones who can, some have been very helpful and can create custom plugins for you. Of course at a price). @nocodeventure have been really helpful to us and supported a lot of our custom plugin needs.
I hope this helps to give an idea of what you would need to be prepared or before you dive into it.
Either way it is doable, and from what we have seen so far, the benefits are really great.
I believe you would need to publish a whole new app unless Gaurav gives you the app signing key.
Thanks for sharing.
what are the benefits of having bubble mobile over using BDK?
currently we use build natively which has much more options then bubble mobile plus we don’t have to build another app. Since we do not need offline capabilities and do need in app payment it is an easy decision at this stage but would love to hear your take and experience.
Our main app is on BDK mobile. I’ve been building a side project app with Bubble mobile to evaluate its readiness as a replacement.
I would not switch today, bubble’s mobile is too buggy and not feature rich enough.
But everything has to start somewhere…. give it 18 months and my answer will probably be different.
Thanks for your perspective! What would be a reason to switch to bubble mobile?
The main reason for us and why we switched was because with Bubble native, you’re getting an actual native app rather than a wrapped webapp like in BDK.
With out app we saw a significant performance boost when working with Bubble Native. This might not be so important for some other people as apps have different use cases.
Even with the lack of features in Bubble Native, for us we were able to find our way round it and create a relaase ready app.
So weigh your options and see what are the must haves in your current app, test them in Bubble Native and see if they can be achieved out of the box, search for plugins that may solve some specific needs and if you’re able to cover you sue cases then you could go for it.
Thanks. Where did you get the performance gain? Currently in our app it is kinda snappy but we have an optimized SPA so that helps. We do pay for the performance penalty of Bubble in General of course. So we get slow initial load and all but after that it runs ok.
Less reliance on a 3rd party. Better support. Ability to use Bubble plugins designed for mobile. I think ultimately it will be a better mobile experience for end users.
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Overall app performance was better, faster initial load time, faster load times in general, very snappy when switching between different views. All in all, it was a better experience
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