Update on Bubble Mobile needed

Hi Bubble Team, I’m reaching out to ask if there are any updates on the release timeline for Bubble Mobile.

Since it was presented at the last Oct 24 conference and there’s even a dedicated page on the website (bubble.io/mobile), it felt like the feature was just a few weeks away from being available.

It’s now been a while since then, and I was wondering if you could share a more concrete update. Is Bubble Mobile still on track for release in the near future, or are there significant delays? For many of us, knowing whether this is something we can count on in the next month or two — or whether we should look at other solutions — would make a big difference in planning.

ANY clarity would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for all the work you do, and I’m looking forward to hearing more!

Best regards,
Olga

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Here is the link to the mobile announcement:

The timeline I see is for the beta release while nothing about official release till now.

A link to an out of date announcement from 6 months ago is not helpful. That announcement’s timeline have come and gone and as someone on the waitlist, I’m still waiting despite being told by many Bubble headlines that the wait was over. Bubble, where is it at? Has it progressed, or as the out of date announcement from 6 months ago indicated, have other issues gotten in the way of ever getting this out the door. Can you imagine how many people have decided not to use Bubble over that period? The silence and the lack of information tells you a lot.

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@sanastasi check our monthly community update here:

There’s a section about Mobile

Awesome! More ra ra about “it’s future availability” and beta testing improvements while no one is able to use it. We’ve had this since October.

Back to Olga’s question, “when will it be available?”

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Thanks for your attention to this post! I share your emotions on this topic!

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Yup. Crickets. The silence is deafening.

When it’s ready

I don’t work for Bubble, but I’d expect late Spring.

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I was going to write the same exact post of Olga.
I am on the waiting list since the end of 2023. Recently I could see a video on Youtube where the beta version is shown but it looks quite poor. I have also heard that currently there is no plugin support.
Furthermore I tried to ask during the BubbleCon if the publishing of a mobile version of your app would imply a different price plan, but I couldn’t get any answer about that.
Apart the technical aspect, this would be another very important aspect to consider.
I am one of those Olga is speaking about.
I would like to start building a new application that should have both web and mobile version, but, due the current situation, I am beginning to consider other solutions, even if this means starting from zero in learning a new platform.

I think it is important to understand that mobile is a pain in the ass even when you develop in mobile native code. So even if they release it, it will be the bare minimum. If they do not know already, all the native features will hit them hard. It will be difficult to get it smooth and robust. And as soon as Apple or Google change things, Bubble has to be on top of it or else your app will be out of the stores.

So if your business really depends on it think about a plan B until you have seen it, used it and get confident with it.

Also have a look at something like build natively. Gives you a mobile app without the need for separate bubble processes but it does have some drawbacks. But overall it can very well be the case that their offer is better than that of Bubble this year.

I think by the time it is released it won’t really get used or matter.

Maybe before all the AI tools were available for creating Flutter apps (including FlutterFlow), it would have made a difference.

I can generate a complete Flutter app using Cursor and it will work natively.

Bubble is still the leader in terms of rich webUX, but for a standalone mobile app that needs to perform. it may be too late.

I think putting in the effort into the main product and adding built in support for PWA features (camera, notification) and deployment would be enough for most.

I am hoping that the loss of revenue from the WU switch and all the money put into the mobile development still leaves capital for operations.

yes, many people have complained (including myself) about the WU calculations and it may have cost a few companies more than they were originally paying. But the negative publicity probably caused more to leave than gained and frankly most companies were paying more with the prior model and boosts than they are currently paying. My current costs are now half what they were for years…
So they have lost at least 3k per year with the WU model with me alone…
That can change if my sites get more popular and that would be great, but how often does that happen for startups…

Bet they wish they could go back…

True, funny that we also pay less now. A year ago we decided to be less dependable on Bubble and moved data outside to Supabase. We pay 5 times less than we did before.

Would be very intersting to see the books of Bubble. Perhaps they are making crazy money and laughing their pants of when reading posts like this :slight_smile:

My first thought has been to use the BDK plugin, so a wrapper as I think build natively is as well (I didn’t know it).
I have purchased the plugin to evaluate how what I have done behaves (performs) and I was not very satisfied. Furthermore I have noticed it seems not to support the web api. I have created a plugin to use my device camera(s) and, when used in desktop or mobile browsers, it works fine, instead, when I try to see the same page within the wrapper (that for my knowledge is a browser as well), it doesn’t work at all.
The other route would be to learn another platform (I am considering Flutterflow) but, beside the learning curve, I should also then connect the web and mobile frontends to the same backend/database. Here I could go with bubble Data api or with Firebase (or Supabase) but that would require still more time. And, in therory, with Flutterflow one should be able to publish on the web as well (even if it seems that almost everyone prefers using bubble for web and flutterflow gor mobile).
So that’s why having the mobild editor ready would mean a lot now to me.