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Ask HN: What's the fastest way to release a mobile app today?

3 points by tucaz ↗ HN
Imagine I want to launch an Android/IOS mobile app so my users can access a subscription to a magazine which contains pretty much only text content.

What would be the fastest way to get that done today? I know React Native is heavily used, but it seems like too heavy and complex for such a simple set of requirements.

What can I use to get a simple application out in a few days?

6 comments

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davismwfl
Depends on how the content is generated and updated. Is it hosted already on a website? If so, the fast way would be to do either a mobile app that is essentially just a web view for your content or to use something like Cordova to pack up the website and deliver it as an app. I honestly do not advocate for either of these options but they are options.

Personally for any app I want to get out quickly on both platforms I have been using Flutter and find it is a good compromise, better than React Native (IMO) and quick to iterate and simple to still keep a native feel for each platform (and still have performance). Still the best way is to create a native app for each platform, but for what you are doing that seems like overkill at this point.

Really it all depends on how your content is updated and where it is at today that would drive how I'd likely approach it.

tucaz
Today all my content is hosted in wordpress and all articles are basically a title, a body with just text and an audio file.

I'd like to make a mobile app so users can consume the content while offline so the webview is something that won't work for me in this particular case.

A friend told me about Flutter and it seems like something I need to look at. Also, people mentioned Microsoft Xamarin.

Really, what I need is what the web used to be. Text and a list of articles, but offline.

Thanks for the suggestion!

detaro
You could also look at adding a service worker to your website so it works offline in the browser. People are less used to that though.
holografix
Building a website. Why do you need an app?
tucaz
I need an app to offer offline access.

As I'm writing this I'm thinking I could do a PWA and wrap it into some native framework. Would that work?

schmookeeg
I had a similar mission recently -- subscription data that I want to allow access to offline. I have done native and Cordova in the past, and didn't want to use either.

I was able to hoist something in Flutter quickly and painlessly. I was pretty impressed. I hope I never muck with Cordova again after working with it. :)

Worth an hour and a hello-world tutorial to see if you're keen on it. I liked it.