Download to iOS feature needed & Customer service feedback

[tatiang]

@ioannis @matt_conroy @domhnallohanlon @wei

iOS Downloads

I’m going to preface this by saying I know you’re all working hard and I have a lot of respect for you individually. You’re helpful and knowledgeable and kind. But I’m losing faith in Thunkable as a company and that’s a hard truth to swallow. I really love this product and I so so want it to succeed. My assumption is that you’re all over-worked and there’s not enough staff because… reasons:

I’m going to add my voice to previous requests that we get an update about the ability to download projects directly to iOS devices without the need for TestFlight. If it’s not on the roadmap, please let us know definitively. This waiting game is not good. It was last promised “summer of 2022”: [Solved] How can I download my iOS app for testing [July 2022] - #2 by jared. Thunkable Live is a bit buggy but mostly works fine. But the large white bar at the bottom of every preview makes testing apps that require any precision whatsoever in terms of layout a huge guessing game. We need to be able to quickly and accurately test our projects on our mobile devices.

Customer Service

I would add this as a GitHub feature request as has been standard practice in the past but: I know Thunkable staff say they review the GitHub feature requests and bug reports but there aren’t any comments by staff this calendar year. That means dozens of posts by users appear to have been ignored. No response, no tagging to let us know what might be a priority or even that something has been read by someone who can do something about it. I know staff are working on an improved bug reporting system. That’s good. But what do we do about NOW?

I know I’m not the only customer feeling this way. Here’s a comment by a user a few weeks ago on GitHub expressing a similar sentiment:

For the first time, I’m going to start shopping around. I’ll probably – and hopefully – stick with Thunkable but as a paying user, I need more from this company. The paid individual support available through the chat button within projects has been quite good and I appreciate that. But customers need responsiveness in this community, and the forums and GitHub (until it’s replaced by something better) should show proof of that.

[jared]

I second this in so many ways and others.

Like, where the heck is innovation at? How in the heck are layouts still in a hidden beta condition. Why is there still energy spent maintaining StP. Why can’t Bluetooth be updated to use all methods of comm. still no charts. Can you even send a file over api yet? And let’s not even talk about fine grained design details. Animations. Custom component systems. Global styles. Apple sign in. The access tokens for sign in are hidden prohibiting secure access to google/Firebase cloud systems. The list goes on.

Prices raised then Downloads promised a year ago and innovation now pushed to the side it seems as customers became complacent and corporate bla bla bla bla bla

I’ve been a fanboy for a long time but my interest has waned over the past year unfortunately. I’d love for it to be reinvigorated

[Chris_Anderson]

Hi @tatiang and @jared - We haven’t met yet, I’m Chris from Thunkable First off, thanks for your candid feedback and for being such valuable members of our community for so long. We greatly appreciate all of your contributions and the support you lend fellow community members here so regularly.

We hear your frustrations, and want to do everything we can to earn your trust and loyalty. Below I will respond to your specific points @tatiang.

iOS Downloads

We are exploring what it would take for users to be able to download their projects via Thunkable using their own Apple Developer Certificate, while ensuring compliance with Apple’s policies.

We’d love any additional feedback here for what users are looking to accomplish with iOS downloads, so we can best meet this need.

In the meantime, TestFlight is the best method for testing apps on iOS. It’s what we use here internally at Thunkable to test our releases. This allows you to publish a version of your app to TestFlight and then send a link to anyone who could then install the app on their phone as they would any other published app. Publishing to TestFlight takes about 40 minutes and once that is done anyone can download and test instantly.

Thunkable Live

We welcome all feedback about our Thunkable Live app here in the Community. The size of the bottom bar on Thunkable Live is due to the Apple Developer License Agreement, which requires us to dedicate less than 100% of the screen towards executable code. Your feedback is well taken though, and we’ll look into options to improve the user experience.

GitHub Bug Reports and Feature Requests

While we do monitor GitHub, you’re 100% right that we need to be more responsive and communicative there and here in the community. In an effort to centralize feedback more, we’re considering moving away from using GitHub for Bug Reporting and Feature Requests (more information will be forthcoming soon). Users can always reach out here in the Community, or via our chat support (if you’re on a PRO plan or higher).

Thanks again for your feedback, please do keep it coming.

PS - I’m still fairly new at Thunkable, and would love to chat sometime if you’re ever up for it, to learn more about how you’re using Thunkable, and what would make your experience here in the community and in the product better (in addition to what you’ve already shared).

[tatiang]

Chris,

Thank you for taking the time to respond in a thoughtful way. I’m glad you’re open to feedback. We’ve exchanged messages since and I’m definitely willing to talk more over Zoom or private messages.