How To Create A Web App For Ubuntu Phone

Compete guide to show you how to create a web app of any website for Ubuntu Phone.

Ubuntu Phone was released last month and users have started to receive their Ubuntu Phones starting from last week. If you read any Ubuntu Phone review, you might be aware that Ubuntu Phone relies heavily on web apps. Web Apps were first introduced in Ubuntu 12.10, way before Ubuntu Touch came in to picture. It has been included in all the subsequent Ubuntu versions.

Since Ubuntu Phone doesn’t have many native apps, it is counting on web apps to fill the gap. Good thing is that you don’t need to be a programmer to create a basic web app of your website/blog or any website for that matter. In this tutorial, we are going to see how can you easily create a web app for Ubuntu Touch.

Create a web app for Ubuntu Phone

Follow the steps below to create a basic web app for Ubuntu Touch:

Step 1: Create a web app package

Canonical has created an online web app package generator for anyone to easily create a new web app. Go to Webapp Generator. It will ask you to log in to your Ubuntu One account. If you don’t have one, it’s time to create it.

Once you log in with your Ubuntu One account, you’ll see a screen like the one below. You’ll need to provide the necessary information such as desired name of app, URL and logo of the website for which you are creating the web app and few other obvious stuff.

However, pay special attention to the field Developer namespace. It should be the same as which you have used in Ubuntu One developer account. If this is your first time, do click on the MyApps account link situated below the Developer namespace field. You can create a developer namespace here. Once created, use the same developer namespace in web app generator.

Once you submit all the details and click on the submit button, it will generate a click package for the web app. Which is great because you have won half the battle here.

Step 2: Submit your web app to Ubuntu Store

Once you have your web app package generated, it’s time to submit it to Ubuntu Store. Go to the submission page to upload your package. This page gives you a summary of all the applications created by you. If this is your first time, it will look something like the screenshot below. Click on New Application here:

You’ll have to fill out details once again. And this time more than what you did earlier in step one. You’ll have to again fill up the web app name, logo, URL etc. In addition, you’ll have to provide a tagline, info, description, category and keywords for your application. There are some advanced options as well but you should not be needing that. The submission form is self explanatory in my opinion.

Once you click the submit button, it will tell you if there is something missing. If everything is fine, it will take you to the last page of submission where you can review stuff. If you are satisfied with it, just hit the Submit for review button.

Note that it won’t be available on desktop version of Ubuntu Software Center even after it’s approved to be published.

How to know if your app has been approved?

You’ll receive mail (on the email account that you used for Ubuntu One) that your application has been submitted for review. Few minutes later you should receive email that your app has been published or not. You can see your published app in Ubuntu Store on Ubuntu Phone. If you don’t have an Ubuntu Phone, you can use this unofficial web interface to browse all the available Ubuntu Touch apps and search your app here.

That’s all you need to do to create a basic web app for Ubuntu Phone. I created one for It’s FOSS which looks something like this on Ubuntu Phone:

You might find it very similar to mobile version of It’s FOSS but that’s just the concept behind Ubuntu Web Apps. I hope you find this tutorial to create Ubuntu web apps helpful. Stay tuned for more Ubuntu Phone related stuff.