Hello,
I wonder if anyone are looking for an open source mobile app template for Discourse? We are finishing one for xenForo, and are thinking of making it available on Discourse. Is it something you guys are interested to see?
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Hi and welcome @forumcopilot, I’ve moved your topic because the extras category is meant to be for completed projects you can download today. Good luck with the project! :3
I’ve seen a couple of other attempts at native apps but they are both abandoned and closed source to my knowledge (Forumate - Native Discourse client for iOS, Fig - Native Discourse client for iOS - #111 by nanohits). Something better maintained (especially open source) could be cool! I’d love to be using a native app to save on power and the iOS26 eye candy but I haven’t come across anything full featured that still works well today.
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I’m interested to understand the motivation. What can an app do for the user that a web site cannot? I mean, these days web browsers on mobile have APIs for location, camera, uploading files, etc. What does an app add?
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In case no one knew, this is fair points, and You can save it to your home-screen and run it as an app on just about any device, including desktop, thanks to advances in most browsers, and operating systems. No app store publishing or separate framework to maintain.
It is certainly possible to wrap the PWA to make it app-store friendly. I can see this being useful for a large site with a big budget, because most users really struggle to get their heads around the whole PWA / not needing an app store dynamic.
I looked into this a while ago, but abandoned it due to:
- Significant effort / cost to set it up (US$10,000ish)
- Significant effort / cost to maintain it (another US$10,000ish per year).
A lot of this is interaction with and management of the App stores themselves. And there are other issues like Apple / Google wanting a cut of any cash transactions, etc etc.
If you’ve got the expertise available cheaply then perhaps it would be worth it. I’ve chosen to instead just nurture my users through the PWA learning curve!!
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Seems like this (not this, but the following) was published today:
It’s just a coincidence.
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Here’s another:
Thanks everyone for the input!
Looks like the Discourse community is well served.
We released the xenForo mobile app template not too long ago, along with a generic mobile app that connects to any xenForo forum that installed our extension, similar to what Tapatalk did back in the day, except it is now open source. You can download our app or view the source code at:
Push notifications is also working and works out of the box.
We were thinking if it is something we can offer to the Discourse community, but looks like it is not something too valuable given the number of choices already out there.
In any case, let me know if Forum Copilot can do more for everyone. 
To reply to myself and answer my own question a bit. Down below someone mentions Dexo, a mobile app and immediately some possibilities come to mind. With that app, one could be a member of a bunch of different Discourse communities, and have an app that easily switches between them. It could also periodically connect to them and get updated counts of unread messages, DMs, etc. So it could make a Discourse site feel a little more “real time” by getting pinged on your phone when something happens. A PWA could not do that (to my knowledge). And one app connecting to multiple discourses can make participating in several discourses easier. With the PWA approach, each discourse you participate in would need to be a distinct icon on your phone. There would be no easy way to just switch between different discourse servers. So either you use a web browser and switch between tabs, or you have a bunch of home screen icons that you tap to check each discourse.
So, from the perspective of just one discourse, an app doesn’t make a ton of sense. But if the users of MY discourse also participate in a bunch of others, then I can see why those users could enjoy an app that unifies them all.
Note that this already existed for many years, there is an official app called “Discourse Hub”
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The app (at least for Android) is not very good. It has a 2.4 rating. So considering that - there is definitely room for others to jump in and try - or maybe improve on what has already been done.