Building from your phone
Overview
The Emergent mobile experience lets you build, preview and manage your projects from your phone or tablet, no native app download required. Mobile access is through the web/PWA at app.emergent.sh. The Emergent native app is not currently distributed on the App Store or Google Play (existing installs continue to work, but no new downloads are available).
You can chat with agents, watch builds in real time, test previews and start new apps, all from your mobile browser.
What you can do
Chat & build
Describe features, review agent changes and approve builds in the conversation thread.
In-app preview
See your Expo/React Native app running in an embedded preview, no separate browser tab needed.
Start new apps
Begin a brand-new app from the Home tab. (Brainstorm jobs and Projects management are not available on mobile.)
Manage your account
View subscription details, credits and settings from the Account tab.
Accessing Emergent on mobile
Visit app.emergent.sh in any mobile browser. For the best experience, add it to your home screen as a PWA:
- iOS (Safari): tap the Share icon → Add to Home Screen
- Android (Chrome): tap the menu (three dots) → Add to Home Screen
Note
The Emergent native app is not available for download on the App Store or Google Play. New installs must use the web/PWA at app.emergent.sh.
Navigation tabs
The Emergent mobile web app has three bottom tabs:
| Tab | What it does |
|---|---|
| My Apps | Filterable list of all your apps, tap any to open it and start building. |
| Home | Start a new app, access recent activity and workspace highlights. |
| Account | Subscription, credits and sign-out. |
Starting and building a project
Open My Apps or Home
Tap My Apps to open an existing project, or tap Home to start a new one.
Chat with the agent
The conversation thread appears. Describe the app or changes you want; the agent gets to work.
View the preview
When the agent finishes, the embedded preview updates automatically, no separate publish step needed for preview.
Iterate
Continue chatting to refine features; each build refreshes the embedded preview.
In-app preview
For Expo/React Native projects, the preview is embedded directly in the mobile app. You can also scan an Expo Go QR code to open the project inside the Expo Go app on your device (for newer projects, device-code authentication is used instead of the camera QR flow).
Note
Mobile app previews are Expo/React Native only. All mobile apps built on Emergent use the Expo/React Native stack.
If you need to test on a physical device, scan the Expo Go QR code shown in the preview panel. No same-Wi-Fi connection is required, Emergent's cloud-hosted device streaming is free and works anywhere.
Over-the-air (OTA) updates
OTA is how the Emergent platform itself delivers updates to the app, it is not a user-facing button or workflow. For your own published Expo apps:
- JavaScript and asset changes can be shipped OTA by re-publishing your project (no store review required).
- Native binary changes (new permissions, new SDKs) require a full rebuild and store submission triggered from the Publish panel.
There is no "Push OTA Update" button exposed to users in the mobile interface.
What's available on mobile vs. web
Note
New apps can be started from the Home tab on mobile. However, Projects management and Brainstorm jobs are not available on mobile, use the web workspace at app.emergent.sh for those workflows.
| Feature | Mobile (app.emergent.sh) | Web workspace |
|---|---|---|
| Start a new app (Home tab) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Open and iterate existing apps | ✅ | ✅ |
| Embedded in-app preview | ✅ | ✅ |
| Fork / clone project | ✅ | ✅ |
| Push to GitHub | ✅ | ✅ |
| VS Code view | ✅ | ✅ |
| Brainstorm job type | ❌ | ✅ |
| Projects management | ❌ | ✅ |
| Bulk environment management | ❌ | ✅ |
Best practices
Chat-based building and previewing works great on mobile. For GitHub sync, forking, VS Code access and Brainstorm jobs, switch to the web workspace at app.emergent.sh.
Scan the Expo Go QR code from the preview panel to run your app on your physical device. This is the fastest way to catch UI glitches and permission prompts before you publish.
Native APK/AAB/IPA builds are triggered from the Publish panel on the web workspace. Fix issues in chat → re-publish → then rebuild from the panel.
