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Building apps on Rork is incredibly easy. What used to take months for a production team to put together can now be done in minutes. Rork uses a simple prompt generation system so you can express exactly what you want. This guide will help you get started building your first app in the Rork editor.

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Step 1: Create an Account

To use Rork, you need to create an account. Creating an account is free. You can sign in with Google or Apple. Once you sign in, you will be asked to answer a short survey before being sent back to the home page.

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Step 2: Think of an Idea

Every great prompt starts with an idea. To get started, feel free to branch off an existing app idea, like “Uber for Cat Food” or “First Person Shooter Zombies Mobile Game”. We have an explore screen so you can get inspired by thousands of other app developers. In our onboarding, we encourage you to get started by remixing others’ apps as a baseline.

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Step 3: Choose Your App Type

Rork builds three kinds of apps: two native mobile apps and a web app. Pick the platform in the picker next to the prompt box before you send your first message. Choose For iPhone when the app should feel deeply native on Apple devices, or when it needs Apple-only features: home screen widgets, Live Activities, Apple Watch, HealthKit, ARKit, or high-performance games. Read Build a native iPhone app with Rork for the full guide, or iPhone, Android, or web: what’s the difference for the comparison. Choose For Android when you want a real native Android app instead of a cross-platform wrapper. Choose For web for a browser-first product: a landing page, a dashboard, an internal tool, or a SaaS-style app.
One choice does not lock you in. A single Rork project can hold an iPhone app, an Android app, and a web app side by side. Each app has its own code. They share the chat, and the backend if you have one. You can add the next platform at any time from the platform switcher above the preview, or from Project Settings → Add new app. See Convert your app between iOS, Android, and web.

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Step 4: Prompt It

On the home page, you can start a new project by just typing in the prompt box. Try to focus on one main function for your prompt to begin. The more complex you make the initial prompt, the harder it’s going to be for you to iterate after that point. It’s better to start one at a time. Explain the pages and functions that you want, or make it brief and let our intelligent agents handle the job.

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Step 5: Test it Live & Iterate

You will be sent to the Rork editor when you submit your prompt. Your agent will begin working on your app. In a few minutes, you’ll have a fully functional app that you can test. How you test it depends on the app type:
  • For iPhone: run the app in the iOS simulator directly on the website, or test on your phone with the Rork Max app for iPhone. To install Rork Max on your iPhone, open rork.com/ios/install on your Mac or Windows PC and follow the steps. The Rork Companion desktop app can also install a Swift project directly from the Rork editor.
  • For Android: run the app in the Android emulator directly on the website.
  • For web: the live preview opens right in the editor, and you can open it in a browser tab at any time.
The iOS simulator and the Android emulator run on rented cloud machines, so they spend credits per minute. See build credits vs cloud credits. You can also take screenshots and record your app in the simulator. Captures attach directly to your chat draft, so you can show Rork what needs changing or download a quick demo to share. After playing around with your app, you can send more messages on Rork to continue iterating on our app. You can clone your project at any point to start from a new thread, or you can start a new project entirely by prompting on the home page. Good luck with your first app on Rork!