Draftbit supports a number of ways of publishing and sharing your app with others.

App Store Publishing

Apps built in Draftbit can be published to both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Draftbit apps can generate binary files (.ipa for iOS, .apk or .aab for Android) which can then be uploaded to their respective App Stores for publishing.

All Draftbit users can request an App Store publish, where Draftbit handles generating those binary files and uploading them to the App Stores. Users on a Pro plan can also export their Draftbit apps and manage the binary creation and publishing process themselves.

Requesting an App Store Publish

You can request that Draftbit publish your app to these App Stores from the Publish button in the top navigation of the Draftbit builder.

Submitting the first request for your app requires some setup steps you must complete outside of Draftbit. After completing those, you then must add certain credentials to Draftbit in order for us to upload your app binaries to your App Store accounts.

Guides for these setup steps are linked below:

Once you've successfully completed the setup steps and submitted your request, publishing can take up to 48 hours to process, during which time you won't be able to re-submit new builds. Make sure you're submitting the version you want to publish!

After your request has been processed, you'll be notified if the publish succeeded or failed. Binary builds can fail for several reasons and if you receive a notice of failure, we'll do our best to diagnose why and share those reasons with you.

If your request is successful, it means your binary is now uploaded into the relevant App Store account. From there, you'll be able to deploy your app to TestFlight (Apple)/test mode (Google Play) or publish them into the public app stores.

Exporting & Self-Publishing Your App

If you're on a Draftbit Pro plan, you're able to export your app. Exporting your app allows you to continue build or make changes to your app in code, outside of Draftbit.

Exporting your app also allows you to manage your app binary creation and upload to the App Stores yourself. We've created guides to help you navigate that process, should you choose that option.

Note: Pro plan users can also request publishes from Draftbit - self-publishing your app is simply an option if you prefer more control over the process.

Sharing Your App

An alternative to publishing your app is to create a shared link for others to access your app in Preview Mode. This is useful for when you want others to view a draft version of your app, get feedback from colleagues or clients, etc.

Here's our guide to Sharing Your App.