Your own iOS and Android apps

With the Marketplace plan, your marketplace can have its own app in Apple’s App Store, with your name, your icon and your listings. It is published under your own Apple developer account, so it shows your business as the seller. Members download it, sign in with their usual account and get notifications on their phone for new messages, offers and approved listings.

The iPhone app comes first. The Android app comes later.

How it differs from Add to home screen

Add to home screen is free on every plan: visitors install your website on their phone from the browser, with your icon. It needs no app store, but members have to find and install it themselves, and on iPhone notifications only work once it’s installed.

Your own app is a real app in the App Store: members find it by searching the store, it carries your listing, icon and screenshots, and it sends notifications like any other app. You can use both.

What’s included and who does what

Yclas does the technical work: we build the app, prepare the App Store listing (name, texts, icon and screenshots), upload each version, submit it to Apple for review and follow the review. When the app or its listing changes, we build and submit a new version.

You do a few one-time steps with Apple that no one else can do for you:

join the Apple Developer Program under your own name or your business’s name (Apple charges a yearly fee for this);
create two keys in your Apple account and save them on the Get your app page, so we can build and send notifications for your app;
create the empty app record in App Store Connect, with the details the page gives you;
after we submit the app, fill in Apple’s App Privacy form once, with the answers the page gives you.

The Get your app page lists each step with the exact answers to copy, and shows your app’s progress until it is live in the store.

Talk to us through Support before you join the Apple Developer Program, so we can confirm your site is ready and guide you through it.

Switch it on

The apps are part of the Nova theme. On other plans, and during the Marketplace trial, the switch is locked and says Your own iOS and Android app is included in the Marketplace plan.

In your admin panel, go to Settings › General.
In Mobile apps, switch on iOS and Android apps.
Click Save changes in the bar at the bottom.

Once it’s on and saved, the Apple Team ID and Android signing certificate fingerprints fields appear in the same section, with a link to the push notification settings for your app.

Switching it on lets members’ phones register for app notifications and turns on the links your app uses. Building and publishing the app itself is a separate, one-time step: in your Yclas account, open My sites, click Settings on your site, and click Get your app in Mobile apps.

If the switch says Set by Yclas support for your site, ask us through Support to change it.

Apple Team ID and Android fingerprints

These two fields let a link to your site, for example a listing someone shared, open in your app instead of the browser, on phones that have the app installed. Apple calls these universal links, Android calls them app links.

Setting	What it does
Apple Team ID	The ID of your Apple developer account, a short code of letters and numbers shown in your Apple Developer account. With it, links to your site open in your iPhone app. We fill it in for you while we set up your app, so you normally don’t need to type it.
Android signing certificate fingerprints	The SHA-256 fingerprints of the keys your Android app is signed with, separated by commas. Same purpose as the Team ID, for Android. Leave it empty until you have an Android app; we’ll give you the values.

Until a field is filled in, links simply open your site in the browser, as they do today.

The Apple Team ID is the same setting used by Sign in with Apple (Add-ons › Apple). If you use both, they share one value, so changing it in one place changes it in the other. See Registration and login.

What members get

Your marketplace in an app: the app shows your Nova site as it looks on a phone, with your listings, search and messages, and a tab bar at the bottom: Home, Search, Post, Messages and Profile.
Notifications on their phone: a new message, a new offer (New offer from and the member’s name) and their listing going live (Your listing “…” is live). Tapping one opens the conversation or the listing.
Links that open in the app: a listing link someone sends them opens in your app when they have it installed.
Their usual account: members sign in with the same account they use on your website. Notifications are per phone: a member with two phones gets them on both, and signing out stops them on that phone.

App notifications come on top of the emails your site sends, and on top of web push notifications in the browser.

Good to know

Marketplace plan only. If your site moves to another plan, or you switch the apps off, the app stops getting new versions and notifications, and links open in the browser again.
Nova only. The Mobile apps section appears in Settings › General when your site uses the Nova theme.
Apple reviews every version. Apple decides whether to accept the app; if they reject a version, we see why and you’ll be told by email, as you are when it goes live.
Your listing and screenshots are prepared for you from your site. If you’d like something changed, ask us through Support.
Firebase Cloud Messaging under Add-ons is for an app’s notifications. Leave it empty unless we ask you to set it up.

Add to home screen — install your website on a phone like an app, free on every plan.
Push notifications — notifications in members’ browsers, on every plan.
Compare plans — what the Marketplace plan includes.
My sites — your sites in your Yclas account, where you find Get your app.
Get help from Yclas support — ask us to start your app.