How can I temporarily disable an app?

I am interested in disabling an app for a short amount of time and then turn it back on, it should appear the same and use the same link when it comes back online. Is there a way to easily do this?

The easiest way would be to change the published URL to something random, and then change it back later.

The App would still be accessible if somebody was able to guess the URL, but that would be pretty unlikely.

4 Likes

I have a question. I know If the app is already added to homescreen and we change the Published URL, users are going to see “APP NOT FOUND”

But if we change the URL back to the original one, would users be able to open that app again from homescreen or will they have to reinstall it again?

Yes, I believe that would work.
When you add the App to your home screen, essentially what you are doing is creating a bookmark to the App URL. So it would just behave like any other bookmarked URL. If it resolves to something and that something is reachable (and functioning), then it will work :slight_smile:

1 Like

Another scenario:

I have a very complex app which is live. I wanted to add some more features to it so I created a duplicate and added new features as an experiment in the duplicate app and they were working fine.

Now, if I rename the URL of original app to something random, and publish the duplicate app with the ORIGINAL URL, will users be redirected to my duplicate app with new features?

Yes. In fact I have a client that insists on doing this every time we add new features to his app.

So we make a copy, build the new features in the copy, publish that so he can test, then once he is happy we swap the URL’s over and delete the original.

I talked a bit about this in the below post:

6 Likes

Awesome!! That’s a great way of testing and experimenting new features for the app.

Yes, just to complete this answer: if you “add to home screen” from Chrome on Android (or Safari on IOS), the app is actually installed by Play Store (or App Store) on your phone, and it looks like an app downloaded from the store, which is far better than a simple url bookmark :wink:
(Doesn’t work if you use another browser)

And I was also able to download the app on my desktop (on windows 10) from Chrome, but it may be available only for PCs and Glide Apps Pro…

Unpublish

1 Like

As long as they both point to the same database (and not a copy of the database), you should not have any issues.

if I duplicate the app and the data source but publish it with the original apps URL, that wont work?

Yes, but you gave the impression that the app had been significantly modified after the copy, and you need to know if the data source has been updated during that time, the update data will not automatically be part of the update app simply by using the same URL.

Yes, I am aware of that.

Was just curious about the URL part.

My practice is to always use a url that I want to publish and then redirect it to the app url. How this would benefit your situation is that you could simply redirect new users to a landing page during the time you don’t want the app accessed.
Added to this you could also just make a new tab, put it up front, and have it go nowhere but give a message to the existing users that the app is undergoing maintenance or unavailable or whatever you choose. At the same time, turn of visibility of the other tabs to all users except for admin.
Then just remove the tab, revert the visibility blocks, and modify the url redirect when you are ready to turn it back on.

2 Likes

this makes the most sense. How do you unpublish?

It’s in the share Button or the settings

I was looking for exactly how to have a ‘production’ and working versions of an app. Thanks for this.

Stanley