Sublime Forum

**R28** · July 22, 2019, 9:06am

Hi, we really need this awesome SublimeTextApp in our iPhones, iPads and oher mobile devices! With basic set of plugins and
with the ability to synchronize files between devices!

**youlam** · July 22, 2019, 3:08pm

The issue of file synchronization should really be the responsibility of the OS/user. Apart from that I agree it would be nice to have a version of ST on the iPad. Because Apple is playing evil and doesn’t want to issue an all-in-one device that’s both laptop and touchscreen and that runs OSX, the iPad is the closest we get.

Having ST on the iPhone makes less sense to me, because the iPhone keyboard is too limited. (And you only have two thumbs, so many keyboard combinations are precluded.)

But anyway… given the difficulty of porting apps from OSX to iOS and the limited resources of the ST team, even the iPad port will probably never happen.

**R28** · July 26, 2019, 4:40am

Thanks

**bschaaf** · September 16, 2019, 2:39am

I recon there’s a fair number of innovations available in the mobile space for a text editor, but a touch screen has very different user interface requirements to a keyboard + mouse desktop app. A simple port of Sublime Text to mobile platforms would IMO be a pretty bad user experience. I’m also not sure whether plugin support is possible, given Apple’s restrictions for iOS.

**gj1118** · September 16, 2019, 7:58pm

Hi There,
Please don’t take it otherwise, but can you please let me know what is your use case wherein you would like to develop an app from your phone? Please dont get me wrong, I just want to understand the use case as I have seen a lot of development related apps providing apps for mobile world and I am left wondering , why ?

Thanks for all of your time and patience.

**trashyms** · September 17, 2019, 10:00pm

Hello.
In my case, I am a trainer and a math teacher.

I can compile and run simple (without boost poco and so on libs) C and C++ programs on ipad.
I can run simple python and most python for applied mathematics programs on ipad.
I would be able to prepare all my slides exercices and solutions on my macbook pro at home.

Then just take my ipad with me for the effective courses and lessons with the possibility to modify and run everything from the ipad would be perfect for me. Or just verify some source code for instance.

I have to say that I don’t usually need the heavy macbook pro during the class.

And use the available windows machine is very disturbing for me. I hate Windows operating systems.

This is just my use case. Perhaps others see their own benefit.

Good bye.

**lucameier** · September 18, 2019, 7:39am

Sounds like an interesting idea… but I think it’s not really worth it without community plugins and like Benjamin said, it may not be very easy on iPhone…

**hartness** · October 29, 2019, 1:00pm

I understand the with the constraints you mention above that a dedicated iphone/ipad app would involve too much time and effort to reproduce the same functionality but have you thought of a simple code viewer with the editing feature (and complexity that goes with it) switched off.

I have a lot of code which I can maintain and compile on my laptop/desktop but would love to be able to load the same code for viewing on my iphone/ipad when travelling. Cross device synchronization is not something you would need to worry about as for apple users the code is likely to be kept on an icloud drive, just provide access through an iOS app and allow us to view the code in language dependent colour coded glory

**bschaaf** · October 30, 2019, 1:10am

Aren’t there already hundreds of apps that do this? This is my own opinion, but I think the market for read-only code viewers is an already saturate niche.

**hartness** · October 30, 2019, 9:23am

Can you point me to a good one then?

**Orlmente** · October 30, 2019, 9:56am

here you go: https://lmgtfy.com/?q=iphone+source+code+viewer&s=g

**bschaaf** · October 31, 2019, 3:14am

I don’t have the need for such an app, nor do I own an apple device, so I can’t make any good recommendations.

**hartness** · October 31, 2019, 11:01am

Well I have on both counts and I can tell you there isn’t much of a choice, hence my request

**R28** · October 31, 2019, 2:03pm

It’s very simple! I like working at sublime. A lot of useful features. Very handy tool. I use it for all kinds of purposes on pc and mac. And it would be very convenient for me to synchronize documents between all my devices and to open and modify the original sublime-text-app for iPhone!

**dennishay** · April 1, 2020, 1:30pm

Full keyboard / mouse support with IOS 13.4 looks interesting. I can’t wait to use sublime text on ipad

**olaszondet** · March 9, 2022, 2:35am

Will it be possible to realize in the future? I have an android smartphone, and I enjoy using this app. But, as soon as I take my iPhone, I get so freaking annoyed that I cannot use a proper sublime text application for this freaking os. I understand the developers’ difficulties while creating such an app because I face the same issues working on my own app. My situation is even worse, as the freaking app crashed the android phone, not only the iPhone. I even used the salvage data recovery services as all the information was deleted.

**bschaaf** · February 21, 2022, 9:29pm

There is no Sublime Text for Android, so there’s nothing to port to the iPhone. See Sublime Text app for iPhone! on why a mobile app won’t happen.

**Jackeroo** · February 21, 2022, 10:02pm

It’s difficult getting through to some people, isn’t it?

**redge** · February 22, 2022, 4:50am

Hi @Jackeroo,

Took me a minute to realise that you were talking about people interested in using a version of Sublime Text on a mobile device rather than the developers of the product.

I’m in the process of deciding whether to purchase Sublime Text, and this thread led to reading the August 2021 post below from @bschaaf, who has also made a point of saying that he doesn’t own an Apple device (not a surprise, given what this post says):

Everything I’ve said in the iPhone thread still holds today. Sublime Text is not a usable interface for a mobile phone whatsoever. I have it running on my PinePhone and it’s an awful experience without a bigger screen and a keyboard/mouse plugged in. Tiny screens with only touch input simply require a different UI to desktops/laptops.

For tablets it’s a bit of a different story. For the iPad specifically the Apple Tax, App Store restrictions and general iOS limitations make it an incredibly unappealing platform to develop for.

Not only does that not get through to me, I’m left with the impression, quite apart from the issue of code editing on mobile devices, that the owners of Sublime Text aren’t interested in my business.* Indeed, I think that Mr. Schaaf and I are living on different planets. That impression gets reinforced when a company says that it has millions of users for a for-profit product, but only two staff, in their spare time, to support users, and has no presence on social media.

I figured that there would be basic training videos on YouTube, but I was wrong. Indeed, on YouTube VS Code is everywhere, but Sublime Text barely exists.** That’s cool if you don’t care about your market share, and figure that training purchasers ain’t your problem. Let other users do the training. Sure enough, the company recommends training documentation that cost it nothing because it was made by volunteers. It also recommends a video series that would bring the cost of a Sublime Text purchase to US$180.

Let me tell you what’s getting through to me: why VS Code has rapidly developed a dominant position in this market, and why the people behind VS Code probably don’t take Sublime Text seriously as a competitor.

*Panic wrote a detailed blog post about why it discontinued its mobile device code editor. Worth reading.

** Terence Martin, who has the only YouTube channel that regularly talks about Sublime Text, has 3,250 subscribers.

**bschaaf** · February 22, 2022, 5:03am

I’d sincerely love to know where we’ve said to have millions of users - afaik we don’t have any stats on our end for users, only for purchases. Closest I’ve gotten are packagecontrol stats, but those users aren’t unique. There’s also a huge difference between a user and a customer.

In any case when it comes to an iOS app the crude answer is that yes there isn’t any interest in that business for the reasons outlined in other comments.

For reference we have 6 staff including the owner/founder, two of which are dedicated towards Sublime Text. Technical support is something I’ve decided to take on and I do some of it in my free time because I enjoy helping people.