App development has never been easier before. But thanks to AI, anyone can build and launch mobile apps as soon as the App Store approves. It doesn't take months of development, deployment, and debugging anymore.

Natively is one of the best AI mobile app builders out there. It means, you get to build an Android or iOS app without coding at all. Read this guide to build your first native app with Natively.

1. Find an Idea

You don’t need an extraordinary idea to build a successful app, but one that solves a problem. Shift your focus to your audience entirely: What do they struggle with? How can this app solve any bottlenecks?

Conduct thorough market and competitive research to understand your audience. Once you’ve validated your idea, you can narrow down all the efforts to building your app.

2. Create a Natively account

From a tracking app to an AI chatbot, you can build any type of app in Natively. You need to sign up on Natively to get started. There are three ways to create your acccount:

Although you can sign up for free, you need to subscribe to one of our plans to use Natively. You can subscribe for any of our three paid plans, depending on your requirements.

3. Write your prompt

The best thing about Natively is that anyone can use it. All you need to do is describe your app idea in the prompt box as best as you can. We suggest adding details on the user interface, features and pages you want in your app.

Here’s an exemplar prompt for a demo app:

If you want to clone an existing platform such as ChatGPT, you can also do that. Just tell the AI to do it exactly in the way it understands through prompt engineering.

Once done, click on the “arrow” and let the AI build the app’s interface. This is what it looks like:

4. Sign-up on Supabase

While your app is technically ‘created’, it won’t be functional yet. Supabase works as the app’s backend, allowing you to act real functionalities.

If you’ve never used Supabase before, you’ll need to Sign Up for it. This is what the screen looks like:

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll end up on your first project’s dashboard, looking like this:

You can rename the project and adjust the settings however you need to. In fact, Supabase will be the platform to troubleshoot if the app doesn’t work.

5. Connect to Supabase

Once your Supabase’s first project is ready, revisit your app on Natively. Click on “Integrations” at the top menubar. You’ll find one of them to be Supabase.

Click on Supabase and a pop-up will appear to login to your Supabase account and connect your app to the Supabase project we created earlier.

Connect your Supabase account and then select the project to connect it together.

Once you’ve connected your app to Supabase, you can add any functional features, pages, and integrations to your app. This also allows you to add AI capabilities in the app.

6. Write your prompt

To add any new features, you need to write prompts in the chatbox. In the chatbox, you can add any information that the AI may need to build your app.

Here’s an example for the Demo app where we’ve added a Sign Up page:

You need to prompt the AI and direct on what you want it to do after every integration. It works that way only.

Build Your Native App

Whether you're a non-coder or coder, Natively can anyone build an app. Depending on the task you're prompting the AI to do, your credits get used up. This means the more complex your app is, the more credits you'll need.

The good part is, you can sign up to build the first version anytime. Start building on your idea with Natively today!