How to Adapt Your Bubble App to Mobile

These days, users often access websites and apps through their smartphones. Creating a Bubble app suited for a mobile experience can help you reach more customers.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://bubble.io/blog/bubble-mobile-apps/
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Hi everyone!

We know how challenging it can be to adapt your Bubble app to a mobile experience, so we decided to write up a blog post offering a few solutions.

In the article, we highlight the various built-in Bubble features that help you craft a mobile experience, as well as platforms that allow you to transform your Bubble app into a native app or progressive web app.

We hope you find this post informative and helpful!

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Thanks for this article! There is another one tool from Zeroqode - Air Native.

Just updated the post with an additional option for creating a native mobile app - using Bubble as a backend, combined with a native mobile frontend platform (https://www.bravostudio.app/ is an example we feature). Happy Bubbling! :slight_smile:

I would urge no one to ever use Nativator.io - they will take forever to respond and, I tried to get it working with them for months with no results. I switched to BDK and it’s been much better!

Wondering if Bubble will someday have a way to publish to native or pwa much like Adalo? Has anyone come across any indication that this could someday be shipped or is somewhere in the pipeline?

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+1 for thebdk.com. Gaurav is super helpful.

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Just added Zeroqode’s wrapper/plugin. Thanks for the rec!

This blog mentioned building a one page app… are multiple page apps not compatible with wrappers?

They are (maybe some exceptions) but performance of multi page apps is not as good as single page apps.

But wouldn’t load time initially be poor on a single page app? Since all your elements are on one page?

I thought having multiple pages would offload excess elements/workflows and improve performance…

This thread has a lot of useful information, pros and cons etc… The general conclusion is that single page apps perform better unless you have a lot of elements.

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Do any of these options offer offline mode? I will need the option to make an app that connects to get Bubble data when there is a connection but when there isn’t a connection I would like the user to still use functionality that is built into the app with the data that has been retreived. I know that AppGyver offers this option but I wonder if there is some way that I could develop the mobile app with Bubble and still have that option.

I recommend you Natively to convert a Bubble app to a native mobile, and it’s really fast and easy. The game-changer is that you can build a mobile app yourself just in 5-10 minutes. (no coding skills required). It is secure - no need to share developer account credentials anymore.

Since Natively is fully automated and does not require developers’ involvement, costs are significantly reduced. Natively are using the same open-source engine as other services, which means good app stability. We’ve added many performance improvements from our side and are implementing more.

A lot of native features: Push Notification, Universal Links (Deeplinking), Camera, QR/Bar code scanner, and more. Just check our Bubble plugin for more details.

Natively provides special terms and warranties for App Store and Google Play acceptance.

Last but not least - Natively has excellent documentation and an easy-to-use plugin for Bubble.

@andriy.bas could you please provide a comparison with other products and also what’s the timeline for android version and other native features? Thanks

Is there support for GPS tracking every X seconds even when the phone is locked/screen off?

@grotabyte , thank you for asking :pray:

Natively is a fully automated development tool that helps you create mobile applications in a few minutes and yourself.

  1. It’s so fast. You can build a mobile app (Android or iOS) yourself just in 5-10 minutes. (no coding skills required).
  2. Natively is more secure—no need to share developer account credentials anymore.
  3. Low costs. Since Natively is fully automated and does not require developers’ involvement, costs are significantly reduced.
  4. Integrations, guidance, and support. We have excellent documentation and an easy-to-use plugin for Bubble.
  5. Performance and stability. Natively are using the same open-source engine as other services, which means good app stability. We’ve added many performance improvements from our side and are implementing more.
  6. Preview App. Before buying, you can run your app and test native features in preview mode.

Like other tools, Natively provides App Store / Google Play acceptance warranties and many native features: Push Notification, Universal Links (Deeplinking), Camera, QR/Bar code scanner, and more. Just check our Bubble plugin for more details.

@tylerboodman We fetch precise locations at a specific interval while the app is open. We don’t track GPS when the phone is locked/screen off. But we are constantly adding new features; please feel free to check the roadmap and submit your ideas: ideas.buildnatively.com

I added a suggestion to the list. It’s very useful for an app like vehicle tracking, etc.

This is the location option I get for another app I have that uses background tracking

Thanks

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Hello, fellow bubblers! Being a part of a no-code venture studio, we have built dozens of apps using bubble.io in the last few years.
We have had to rely on wrappers available in the market to convert our web apps into native Android and iOS apps. These external solutions are great for one-time use. Still, it is not possible to build in additional features yourself and customer support is non-existent given most wrappers are built by solopreneurs. Thus, we built our own wrapper on top of jasonelle with the native functionalities that are important to us. This way, we got full control of our wrapper to make required changes whenever we wanted. We are now uploading our code to GitHub so everyone can access the code and add functionalities according to their app needs.
In Free Wrap we built the following native features:

  • Open Whatsapp Chat
  • Fetch GPS Location
  • Share Text
  • Share Image
  • Get Contacts
  • OneSignal SDK
  • Device Orientation
  • Open web links in-app
  • Change the notification bar color

Moreover, you also have the following capabilities:

  • Select pictures from the gallery
  • Audio Recorder
  • File Uploader
  • Alert
  • Banner
  • Take a photo from Camera
  • Scan QR/Barcode

We launched Free Wrap on Product Hunt and GitHub. Do check it out!

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