Can I create an iMessage app with Bubble?

Need help Mobile
1

Well the title says it all :slight_smile:

2

Hey!

Short answer:

Yes, kind of.

Long answer:

It depends on your requirements. For the general user experience, the answer is yes, you can make a chat app in Bubble that looks and behaves like iMessage.

However, iMessage has several key features that may require development that’s outside of Bubble’s scope, such as encrypted messages, advanced push notifications, native app install, etc.

It’s often useful to get a clear view on what Bubble is made for: making database-based web applications. Like any development language, this doesn’t mean you can’t create anything outside of that scope, but it means that it may not be what Bubble does best. iMessage is a mobile-first app with several native iOS features which may be difficult to implement with Bubble.

If you specify your specific requirements a bit more, I or someone else can probably give you a more precise answer.

1 Like
3

Hi Petter,

Thanks a lot for your reply.
I’m afraid I was clear enough though: I didn’t mean an app like iMessage, but an app you can integrate to iMessage. Like GIPHY, maps and such.

Thanks!

4

Nope — Apple doesn’t provide any API’s to integrate iMessage into your (web) app.

WhatsApp (for Businesses) and Facebook Messenger do provide APIs (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/overview and https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/).

I haven’t really looked into these, but you can probably get this running on Bubble using the API Connector plug-in.

Good luck, cheers!

4 Likes
5

@robbertmastebroek @petter Thanks both for your insights. Closing the topic now as the title is misleading. Here’s the new topic for those interested: