Native mobile app terminology

While the Native Mobile App Editor is similar to building a regular Bubble app in many ways, there are some new terms and concepts introduced specifically for mobile development. Some of these terms may be familiar, but we recommend reviewing them to ensure you’re aligned with the exact definitions we’ll be using throughout the documentation.

Term	Definition
Bubble web app / web app	This is the term we use to describe the “regular” Bubble web app editor, as opposed to this native mobile app editor.
Cross-platform	Cross platform means a native mobile app that is built once, but works on both iOS and Android devices out of the box. Cross-platform in this context does not include web.
Gesture	A gesture is similar to a click in web, but includes things like taps, long press, swipes, pans, and pinches. Users use gestures to interact with a mobile app’s UI and trigger workflows.
Global component	Global component in this doc refers to a component, such as the tab bar, that behaves similar to a reusable element in the sense that it is available on every view, but editing it changes the component across your app. Global components are generally system components offered by Bubble, rather than as something the user builds from scratch.
“Mobile friendly” app	A mobile friendly, or responsive, app is a web application that is opened in a user’s mobile browser. This type of app has been designed to look and perform well on smaller or larger screen sizes.
Native mobile app	A native mobile app is an app that can generally only be downloaded from the Google Play or Apple app store and runs native Swift code on Apple devices and Kotlin code on Android devices. This means it has full access to device hardware, software, and gestures.
Native mobile app editor	This is the term we use to describe the part of the Bubble editor where you edit your native mobile app, as opposed to the above Bubble web app.
Progressive web app	A progressive web app (PWA) is a responsive web application that has been wrapped in a service that allows it to run on a mobile device from the home screen rather than a user’s browser. While iOS and Android platforms are supporting more functionality these days, they are generally limited in what device hardware and software they have access to as opposed to native mobile apps. Note: Android supports far more functionality on PWAs than Apple does.
Section list	A section list is like a vertical list, but it groups your list items by some property on your data source. For example, your contacts app is a section list because it groups your contacts by the first letter of the contacts name.
Safe area	Newer devices have notches, floating islands, curved bezels, etc. which must be accounted for when designing your app. Safe areas are areas on your phone that could be impacted by these device idiosyncrasies.
View	Similar to a page web. This is the highest level “container” and represents what the user will see on their screen when on a particular view