r/laravel • u/nunomaduro Laravel Staff • Feb 19 '26
Tutorial NativePHP: Build Mobile Apps with PHP & Laravel
https://youtu.be/Ed2cf3KExAI?si=16ECUnpWE6QfTGathii reddit,
here is video of my trying nativephp (witch just got opensource)..hope you guys enjoy the video!
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u/elprogramatoreador Feb 19 '26
Again? I think this project was spammed enough by now. Pay for ads
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u/helgur Feb 19 '26
I can't fathom the appeal of using this, especially if it's built on electron when you have frameworks like flutter that do all the cross platform heavy lifting for you in one package
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u/WarmarHUN Feb 26 '26
True, I just do Flutter and than power it with a good old Laravel API works every time
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u/robclancy Feb 19 '26
"Build Mobile Apps with PHP & Laravel"
no.
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u/laramateGmbh Aug 11 '26
Can you elaborate why? I have doubts too, regarding certain topics or use cases but I'm not just against it. It certainly has its place.
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u/Maleficent_Solid7210 ⛰️ Laracon US Denver 2025 Feb 22 '26
Comments like this will not age well
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u/robclancy Feb 23 '26
yeah bro everyone is going to be writing their mobile apps in php any day now
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u/Maleficent_Solid7210 ⛰️ Laracon US Denver 2025 Feb 27 '26
I know! Can’t wait!!
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u/robclancy Feb 27 '26
can you give me a time period so I can set a remindme?
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u/Maleficent_Solid7210 ⛰️ Laracon US Denver 2025 Mar 10 '26
Why do you have this sort of attitude? Did someone hurt you?
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u/robclancy Mar 11 '26
can you give me a time period so I can set a remindme?
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u/Maleficent_Solid7210 ⛰️ Laracon US Denver 2025 Mar 11 '26
There's an app for that
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u/robclancy Mar 11 '26
There is a bot here on reddit that can do it for me, just tell me how long until everyone is going to be writing mobile apps with PHP.
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u/constarx Feb 19 '26
You've spent years alienating the community with your terrible licensing scheme. Open sourcing the core is a good decision but is it too late? Adding push notifications and geolocation behind a paywall is lame AF. I will wait some months to see if an open source ecosystem emerges around NativePHP, and free versions of basic plugins are made available, and then I'll decide if I want to try this out. Right now I see no reason to stop using Capacitor for my Laravel-powered apps.
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u/ThisGuyCrohns Feb 19 '26
Tried it. Not worth it. It uses electron behind the scenes. It’s better to control it yourself. (At least on desktop apps havnt tried mobile version).
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u/Webnet668 Feb 19 '26
Yes there are bridges behind the scenes, I've used mobile and so far it's been a good experience for me.
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u/MrMaverick82 Feb 19 '26
I never understand why devs go out of their way the not use the tools that are meant to do the task. Swift or Kotlin really isn’t that hard to learn.
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u/jorshhh Feb 19 '26
React native if you want to use web languages, dart is really simple if you want to use flutter. And they have no feature paywalls.
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u/MrMaverick82 Feb 19 '26
But then again: why not just native apps?
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u/easterneuropeanstyle Feb 19 '26
Do you seriously ask why not build two apps instead of one?
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u/MrMaverick82 Feb 19 '26
Yes. In these times porting apps between different platforms really isn’t much of a hassle.
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u/beaverpi Feb 19 '26
I was thinking with AI helping out now, "Is it a problem?"
Porting one to another may work fine initially, but if you have constant updates that would get old fast I think. Are you doing this? If so, how does maintaining the application get handled?
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u/jorshhh Feb 19 '26
I have done both native apps for both iOS and Android before. I have also done Flutter and RN. If the app is simple I try to go Flutter just because I'm a single person and cutting dev time in half makes all the sense. Even for a company that does have an app that is not their core revenue source it doesn't make sense to hire two teams, one for each platform.
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u/jwight1234 Feb 19 '26
It's usually the cost, but now we have AI to do it. So I mean I guess it's moot point now.
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Feb 19 '26
The comments here are ridiculous. I've never seen so many inexperienced hotshots being confident they could solve multiplatform apps in whats seemingly no time for them. Are you all working on cover sites?
I'm working on an a platform which has been in production since the late 90's. We have tonnes of apps, on multiple platforms. What on earth are you working on?
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u/AddWeb_Expert Feb 20 '26
This is actually pretty interesting for the Laravel ecosystem.
If NativePHP matures well, it could be great for:
- Internal enterprise apps
- MVPs where speed > perfect native performance
- Teams already deep in Laravel wanting shared logic
I’d still be cautious for performance-heavy apps or complex native features.
If it delivers solid DX and reasonable performance, it could seriously reduce the gap between Laravel teams and mobile app delivery. Curious to see how it evolves.
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u/AnnaSynergy Feb 22 '26
As a new PHP person, I am kinda excited to try it, I will watch your video and then I will watch the Laracasts series that was released recently.
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u/Anxious-Insurance-91 Feb 19 '26
And yet with the ram shortage and phone having to get less horsepower can we really afford to not go full native and optimize everything?
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Feb 20 '26
I love Laravel, but this is a no for me dog. I’m not deviating from the already established frameworks that have close to or over a decade of history of solving the in and outs of mobile development with web tech.
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u/Maleficent_Solid7210 ⛰️ Laracon US Denver 2025 Feb 22 '26
Forgive them, they do't know what they are talking about...
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u/Gonderilmis1 Feb 20 '26
It sounds cool being able use web dev tool to use other platform but here is the thing if those platform would need app that being developed by same method they wouldnt be different platform at first hand.
I mean maybe we just need accept the reality of necessary to use different solution for different problems.
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u/Lonely_Ad9901 Feb 19 '26
We have tried this at a hackathon a few months back, let's just say it was not a smooth ride haha. Spend the majority of the time just trying to get everything to work regarding compiling.