NativePHP

I honestly don't know where to begin with this update. There's just too much. But I'm going to try to cover it all.

NativePHP for Mobile v1.1 is available right now for all license holders.

And it's super easy to get:

Copied!

composer update
 
php artisan native:install --force

composer update

php artisan native:install --force

And you're done. But let's see what's in this release...

#Smaller, Lighter

We've reduced the size of our bundled PHP libraries on both iOS and Android by over 50% and improved our app bundling so that initial downloads of apps are even smaller.

This is massive (pun intended). It means:

Everyone's apps immediately get significantly smaller... in some cases by over 30MB 🤯
Downloading our libraries is faster
Compiling and booting apps is faster
PHP performance has increased (marginally), so every user interaction is faster

Are you getting it yet?

#New Features 🎉

We’ve rolled out several powerful native capabilities and lots of improvements:

💦 Splash Screens: You want it, you got it.
🔐 Secure Storage: Store tokens, secrets, and credentials using the device’s native keychain/keystore.
📍 Geolocation: Fetch accurate location data with permission support, cross-platform.
🎞️ Gallery Picker: Let users select media and handle it directly in Laravel with a simple MediaSelected event.
🤩 Android 15 edge-to-edge support: Makes your apps feel even more native on Android.
🦾 ProGuard & R8 support on Android: Your builds can now be stripped, minified, obfuscated, and symbol-mapped for extra goodness.
⏩ Zipped Laravel bundles on iOS: Further reducing installation overhead for your users, and as a bonus it makes building and running apps during development on iOS way too fast.

These features are fully integrated into NativePHP and your Laravel apps; no plugins or extra packages to manage.

#Modular APIs

We've expanded classes into their own functional areas, instead of the agglomoration of methods into the System class.

We've done this in a backwards-compatible way, so if you were using pre-v1.1, your apps should still function normally for now. We've deprecated most of the old methods, so they will be removed in v2.

Here are your new classes and their new docs:

Each one is designed to be predictable, well-documented, and easy to expand. This sets the tone for all future native features: focused, testable, and Laravel-native.

#Rewritten Documentation

The entire mobile docs experience has been rebuilt around clarity and flow:

Getting Started: Get up and running.
The Basics: Get a good grounding in the parts that make a great app experience.
Concepts: Go deeper on the more involved topics.
APIs: Every Facade. Every method. Every Event.

The new docs are written for Laravel developers first and are a great starting point if you've never built a native mobile app before.

Even if this isn't new to you, have a good read through. And don't forget: if you spot any mistakes, you can contribute improvements, as this site is fully open source.

#Try It Out!

To test all these new APIs, we've been working hard to build out a thorough example in our free Kitchen Sink app.

The Android version is released and fully up to date.

The iOS version is coming very soon!

#Build with it

If you don't have a license to NativePHP for Mobile just yet, there's never been a better time to grab one and start building!

Get your license today!

#Next Steps

We'll be in bugfixing mode for the next couple of weeks as this rolls out, but we're already eyeing up the next set of features to enable you to build even richer apps.

A big part of this update lays the groundwork for something awesome that we can't wait to share with you all. Look out for more about this on our socials (X, BlueSky, LinkedIn) and newsletter in the coming days.

And Laracon US is in just two weeks! We're sponsoring and we're looking forward to meeting any of you who are attending in person. If you see us, please come say hi.

— Simon & Shane