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Google releases tool to let devs bring Chrome apps to iOS & Android

Google-Apache Cordova-Chrome

After letting us know last month that it was getting ready to release a toolkit to let developers easily bring their Chrome web apps to iOS and Android, today Google released a developer preview of the tool. In its blog post, Google explains the tool is based on open-source framework Apache Cordova, which allows devs to build native apps for iOS and Android using CSS, HTML, and Javascript. It’s also making a lot of its own core Chrome APIs available to developers through the preview. It essentially means devs will be able to bring their Chrome web apps to the App Store and Google Play, but it will also let them build new cross platform apps in CSS, HTML, and Javascript. Google explained how it works:

The toolchain wraps your Chrome App with a native application shell and enables you to distribute your app via Google Play and the Apple App Store. We provide a simple developer workflow for packaging a Chrome App natively for mobile platforms. You can run your Chrome App on a device or emulator using the command-line or an IDE. Alternatively, you can use the Chrome Apps Developer Tool to run your app on an Android device without the need to install an IDE or the mobile platform’s SDK.

Google suggests developers interested in learning more check out the dev workflow and sample apps and it will be taking feedback through  Stack Overflow, the G+ Developers page, and its developer forum.

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Comments

  1. Павел Тихонов - 10 years ago

    So… does this mean that Google may eventually bring Chrome Store to iOS and Android?

  2. Yaay, another crappy stuff from crappy android developers who are trying to screw up App Store…

  3. ifunography - 10 years ago

    Uninterested…as much as they can try to mask it, nothing looks or performs better than a native Obj-C app on iOS.

  4. Sounds like Apple is going to have a hard time testing this new breed of resource hogging apps.
    Can’t imagine anything else but very inefficient code, when using such high level languages.
    As long as it doesn’t make my iPad Air crawl or overheat, I’m OK with whatever they do.

  5. Stian Karlsen - 10 years ago

    I think this is great! Finally there is potential for WorkFlowy on Android.

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.