Used discourse APIs to build a flutter app for our community

Community Building Praise

AI-generated summary

SubStrider shares that despite community skepticism, their team successfully built a Flutter-based iOS app for their Discourse community, now live on the App Store. The app is heavily customized and has received positive initial feedback, though minor read-state sync issues were noted. The Android version is expected in a few weeks. They credit Discourse’s robust backend and APIs as the key reason for their platform choice, calling it a success. itsbhanusharma encourages long-term feedback to help others considering native clients. In a follow-up, SubStrider highlights user appreciation for a usability feature in the app — displaying usernames alongside message titles in the message list — which they note is missing in Discourse’s web interface, suggesting it be added. Screenshots are included to illustrate the feature. The overall tone is celebratory and appreciative of Discourse’s capabilities, with constructive feedback offered to improve the core platform.

1

Continuing the discussion from Can discourse be used entirely through the APIs to build a flutter app?:

Against the collective wisdom of the community, we still jumped off that cliff. :zany_face:

The iOS app is live on App Store. Heavily customized for our community. Initial feedback has been positive, some minor read state sync issues identified. Android app will follow in a couple of weeks.

This was the primary reason for us to move to Discourse, its superb backend and API support. And it did not disappoint. :rocket:

Check out the app if you want: ‎TechEnclave App - App Store

Thank you for this great platform.

9 Likes
2

Please post long term feedback highlighting how it has been to manage the app long term.

It is very encouraging to see this is happening and some communities are able to build native clients for discourse

4 Likes
3

I didn’t notice it myself until someone pointed out that they like the app better than the web for messages because they can see the usernames with message titles in the messages list view.

I think they are right and its a usability gap on discourse. Please do consider adding it.

Screenshot 2026-02-01 at 7.50.57 PM
Screenshot 2026-02-01 at 7.50.57 PM1179×2556 214 KB

Screenshot 2026-02-01 at 7.51.57 PM
Screenshot 2026-02-01 at 7.51.57 PM2206×1034 227 KB

1 Like