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Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

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Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#21

Post by dfgwt »

fabiendevos wrote: post #17
dfgwt wrote: post #15

Looks cool, but using it from another mobile device is very slow. Or maybe it's latency to the servers hosting the emulators, I'm not sure. Is there a way to see the ping time?

Yes it works on mobile but is a bit slower, we want to continue to improve performance there. It's reasonable on a Pixel 6 pro, I'm curious which phone are you using? We'll look into the ping time.

It's a Samsung Galaxy A52s, I tried Firefox and Chrome.

Also used a TCP ping app to check what seems to be the demo server - node1.wolfia.com? Average was around 160ms, ranging from 70 to 300ish, so I guess that was the real issue!

I'm located in UK and using a 4G network. Might try it again tomorrow from work and see how it compares.

Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#22

Post by 6figurelenins »

> mobile app developers are stuck with pushing builds every night and waiting a day for the team to see the new code

That doesn't ring true. TestFlight / Play Store uploads are typically available within 15 minutes.

Still, it's nice you're solving deployment overhead. In particular, my team needs side-by-side installs of the live/prod build and dev/staging build.

It's double the headache to stand up a store listing and comply with policy changes, just for an internal distribution channel. Save me.

Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#23

Post by dfgwt »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #18
dfgwt wrote: post #15

Looks cool, but using it from another mobile device is very slow. Or maybe it's latency to the servers hosting the emulators, I'm not sure. Is there a way to see the ping time?

FWIW the demo runs really well in my pixel 4a, although some of the text on the page covers up the navbar. Love how low friction it is though!

Agreed, I'm impressed by just clicking a link and seeing the app there to use, no messing around. Good stuff.

Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#24

Post by liminalsunset »

Underrated use cases (which I hopefully don't ruin by saying out loud):

-Share a browser session; someone can log in and let someone else do stuff without having to share their password.

-Burner phone to install garbage, or untrusted apps on that "you only need once" or that you just need to use to screenshot a coupon etc.

-Burner phone to access Facebook or TikTok with, with no private data risk

-US IP address to get around geoblocking

Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#25

Post by narenkmano »

aneesv wrote: post #20

This is a great service! Do you plan to provide an API to upload new apps?

Thank you! That's the next item on our roadmap. We plan to create a public API and gradle plugin to automate link creation.

Our vision is to have a stable link for your app that links to the latest version of the app so that people can quickly find and interact with it.

Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#26

Post by narenkmano »

liminalsunset wrote: post #24

Underrated use cases (which I hopefully don't ruin by saying out loud): -Share a browser session; someone can log in and let someone else do stuff without having to share their password. -Burner phone to install garbage, or untrusted apps on that "you only need once" or that you just need to use to screenshot a coupon etc. -Burner phone to access Facebook or TikTok with, with no private data risk -US IP address to ge…

Those are some great use cases! We already support the sharing sessions with multiple users. You can tap on the copy link to share control button on the bottom right of the emulator page and send it to someone to share your session :)

Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#27

Post by fabiendevos »

6figurelenins wrote: post #22

> mobile app developers are stuck with pushing builds every night and waiting a day for the team to see the new code That doesn't ring true. TestFlight / Play Store uploads are typically available within 15 minutes. Still, it's nice you're solving deployment overhead. In particular, my team needs side-by-side installs of the live/prod build and dev/staging build. It's double the headache to stand up a store listing a…

Totally true that TestFlight / Play Store uploads are available within 15 min, but in our experience, nobody wants to push to those platform that frequently, and force many upgrades of the app every day, so instead they do nightly builds at best. More importantly, it doesn't help if people don't have the right phone. We would love to help you with this use case, does an emulator in the browser works for you or do you need to install to phones?

Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#29

Post by narenkmano »

liminalsunset wrote: post #28

It appears that the keyboard on a computer does not work in the emulator on either Chrome or Firefox on Mac M1. I think it would be useful to be able to use the keyboard to input text.

It isn't enabled by default. But, if you click on the keyboard icon on the control bar to the left of the emulator, you should be able to use your keyboard. This is something we plan to improve.

Re: Launch HN: Wolfia (YC S22) – A mobile app emulator you can share with a link

#30

Post by TimCTRL »

This is really excellent. A quick one, is there a plan for us to select a particular android device? This would be particularly useful for debugging apps.

Unlike in the IOS world, the Android market is so saturated with devices, you may not know how your app (camera feature for example) will behave on a Tecno phone.

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