Native vs mobile vs web options

Hokay, so, first the “native app” option is still in beta, so it’s not officially supported. It does seem to be unofficially supported, but undocumented.

From a high-level app organization perspective then, there seem to be 3 options:

  • web app (how Bubble normally works)
  • mobile (this is a page that your web page can redirect to when the user is mobile)
  • native app (this is a single page that does everything and is sort of exported to the app store)

Question: can you have a “native app” page for ios and a different “native app” page for android, or can you detect that the app is on ios/android to show different navigation and so on?

Question: is there any advantage to using the “mobile” option vs the responsive layout settings?

Question: if you have a “native app” page that gets sent to one or more app stores, you can still have a web app, right? Are there any side effects to a single “native app” page that make that page inappropriate as a web app? Maybe it takes a long time to load or something like that?

Question: when you build a “native app” page, and submit it to the app store, and it gets accepted, and users download the app, do you have to update it through the app store instead of just pushing a new version from development to live in Bubble?

Question: once a “native app” is on a user’s phone, does it have to communicate with the database through API workflows, or is it still transparently connected like the web app?

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I’m still trying to figure out how the native apps work too but i’ll answer some of your questions as best as I can.

Since the native apps are still in beta, I think bubble only supports iOS. I saw a few posts on the forum about android app development, and I believe @natedogg has a course that explain everything from app build to deployment in the different stores: https://codelessacademy.com/

As for mobile version vs responsive. I had trouble with the responsive layout for my app- removing the margins and adjusting the widths was not enough to make the pages look alright when reduced to mobile size. Hence I started working on the native app. In terms of advantages, using the responsive layout means you don’t have to duplicate workflows which I assume helps a lot with page speed.

Yes if you have a native app page you can still have a web app. I am curious to know though, if you build the native app but aren’t ready to have it in the store, can it still be used as the mobile version of your site in the browser. So instead of switching between mobile versions of pages, the user would remain on the same page, just switching between groups?