What Piye builds
When your idea includes a phone app, Piye builds a real one: an app people install from the App Store and Google Play, with its own screens, navigation and phone features. It isn't a website squeezed into a phone.
Most phone apps need a server: the part that keeps the app's information, signs people in and takes payments. If you also have a website, the phone app and the website share the same server, so a customer's account works on both.
You choose how the app is made on the new project card: React Native (Expo), one app for both iPhone and Android (Piye's usual choice), or Native, an iPhone app written in Swift and an Android app written in Kotlin. See Kinds of phone apps.
Three ways to try it
In the Preview, a phone app has three ways to run:
| Choice | What it is | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Preview | Your app's web version in a phone frame, right in Piye. No phone or simulator needed. | Quick looks while you build |
| Real simulator | A real iPhone or Android phone, running on your computer. Piye gets them ready itself the first time. | Seeing exactly how the app behaves on each phone |
| My phone | Your own phone: scan a code, or plug it in once. | Feeling it in your hand, with real touch, camera and location |
See Phones on your computer and Try it on your phone.
Changing the app
Ask for changes in the chat as you would for a website. With Expo apps, every change you save shows on the phones (simulators and your own) by itself.
Getting it to people
Phone apps reach people through the App Store (iPhone) and Google Play (Android). Each store has an account to create, a fee, a page to fill in and a review. Piye checks what Apple and Google ask for, puts right what it can by itself, and walks you through the rest. See:
Before a phone app goes to the stores, its server must be online: the published app talks to it. Publish it first, and Piye points the phone app at it. See Publish your website.