We’ve just launched Hotwire Native v1.2 and it’s the biggest update since the initial launch last year. The update has several key improvements, bug fixes, and more API consistency between platforms. And we’ve created all new iOS and Android demo apps to show it off! A web-first framework for building native mobile apps Improvements There are a few significant changes in v1.2 that are worth specifically highlighting. Route decision handlers Hotwire Native apps route internal urls to screens in your app, and route external urls to the device’s browser. Historically, though, it wasn’t straightforward to customize the default behavior for unique app needs. In v1.2, we’ve introduced the RouteDecisionHandler concept to iOS (formerly only on Android). Route decisions handlers offer a flexible way to decide how to route urls in your app. Out-of-the-box, Hotwire Native registers these route decision handlers to control how urls are routed: AppNavigationRouteDecisionHandler: Routes all internal urls on your app’s domain through your app. SafariViewControllerRouteDecisionHandler: (iOS Only) Routes all external http/https urls to a SFSafariViewController in your app. BrowserTabRouteDecisionHandler: (Android Only) Routes all external http/https urls to a Custom Tab in your app. SystemNavigationRouteDecisionHandler: Routes all remaining external urls (such as sms: or mailto:) through device’s system navigation. If you’d like to customize this behavior you can register your own RouteDecisionHandler implementations in your app. See the documentation for details. Server-driven historical location urls If you’re using Ruby on Rails, the turbo-rails gem provides the following historical location routes. You can use these to manipulate the navigation stack in Hotwire Native apps. recede_or_redirect_to(url, **options) — Pops the visible screen off of the navigation stack. refresh_or_redirect_to(url, **options) — Refreshes the visible screen on the navigation stack. resume_or_redirect_to(url, **options) — Resumes the visible screen on the navigation stack with no further action. In v1.2 there is now built-in support to handle these “command” urls with no additional path configuration setup necessary. We’ve also made improvements so they handle dismissing modal screens automatically. See the documentation for details. Bottom tabs When starting with Hotwire Native, one of the most common questions developers ask is how to support native bottom tab navigation in their apps. We finally have an official answer! We’ve introduced a HotwireTabBarController for iOS and a HotwireBottomNavigationController for Android. And we’ve updated the demo apps for both platforms to show you exactly how to set them up. New demo apps To better show off all the features in Hotwire Native, we’ve created new demo apps for iOS and Android. And there’s a brand new Rails web app for the native apps to leverage. Hotwire Native demo app Clone the GitHub repos to build and run the demo apps to try them out: iOS repo Android repo Rails app Huge thanks to Joe Masilotti for all the demo app improvements. If you’re looking for more resources, Joe even wrote a Hotwire Native for Rails Developers book! Release notes v1.2 contains dozens of other improvements and bug fixes across both platforms. See the full release notes to learn about all the additional changes: iOS release notes Android release notes Take a look If you’ve been curious about using Hotwire Native for your mobile apps, now is a great time to take a look. We have documentation and guides available on native.hotwired.dev and we’ve created really great demo apps for iOS and Android to help you get started.

Today, we are releasing Hotwire Spark, a live-reloading system for Rails Applications. Reloading the browser automatically on source changes is a problem that has been well-solved for a long time. Here, we wanted to put an accent on smoothness. If the reload operation is very noticeable, the feedback loop is similar to just reloading the page yourself. But if it’s smooth enough—if you only perceive the intended change—the feedback loop becomes terrific. To use, just install the gem in development: group :development do gem "hotwire-spark" end It will update the current page on three types of change: HTML content, CSS, and Stimulus controllers. How do we achieve that desired smoothness with each? For HTML content, it morphs the <body> of the page into the new <body>. Also, it disconnects and reconnects all the Stimulus controllers on the page. For CSS, it reloads the changed stylesheet. For Stimulus controllers, it fetches the changed controller, replaces its module in Stimulus, and reconnects all the controllers. We designed Hotwire Spark to shine with the #nobuildapproach we use and recommend. Serving CSS and JS assets as standalone files is ideal when you want to fetch and update only what has changed. There is no need to use bundling or any tooling. Hot Module Replacement for Stimulus controllers without any frontend building tool is pretty cool! 2024 has been a very special year for Rails. We’re thrilled to share Hotwire Spark before the year wraps up. Wishing you all a joyful holiday season and a fantastic start to 2025.

If you have the luxury of starting a new Rails app today, here’s our recommendation: go vanilla. Fight hard before adding Ruby dependencies. Keep that Gemfile that Rails generates as close to the original one as possible. Fight even harder before adding Javascript dependencies. You don’t need React or any other front-end frameworks, nor a JSON API to feed those. Hotwire is a fantastic, pragmatic, and ridiculously productive technology for the front end. Use it. The same goes for mobile apps: use Hotwire Native. With a hybrid approach you can combine the very same web app you have built with a wonderful native experience right where you want it. The productivity compared to a purely native approach is night and day. Embrace and celebrate rendering things on the server. It has become cool again. ERB templates and view helpers will take you as long as you need, and they are a fantastic common ground for designers to collaborate hands-on with the code. #nobuild is the simplest way to go; don’t close this door with your choices. Instead of bundling Javascript, use import maps. Don’t bundle CSS, just use modern standard CSS goodies and serve them all with Propshaft. If you have 100 Javascript files and 100 stylesheets, serve 200 standalone requests multiplexed over HTTP2. You will be delighted. Don’t add Redis to the mix. Use solid_cache for caching, solid_queue for jobs, and solid_cable for Action Cable. They will all work on your beloved relational database and are battle-tested. Test your apps with Minitest. Use fixtures and build a realistic set of those as you cook your app. Make your app a PWA, which is fully supported by Rails 8. This may be more than enough before caring about mobile apps at all. Deploy your app with Kamal. If you want heuristics, your importmap.rb should import Turbo, Stimulus, your app controllers, and little else. Your Gemfile should be almost identical to the one that Rails generates. I know it sounds radical, but going vanilla is a radical stance in this convoluted world of endless choices. This is the Rails 8 stack we have chosen for our new apps at 37signals. We are a tiny crew, so we care a lot about productivity. And we sell products, not stacks, so we care a lot about delighting our users. This is our Omakase stack because it offers the optimal balance for achieving both. Vanilla means your app stays nimble. Fewer dependencies mean fewer future headaches. You get a tight integration out of the box, so you can focus on building things. It also maximizes the odds of having smoother future upgrades. Vanilla requires determination, though, because new dependencies always look shiny and shinier. It’s always clear what you get when you add them, but never what you lose in the long term. It is certainly up to you. Rails is a wonderful big tent. These are our opinions. If it resonates, choose vanilla! Guess what our advice is for architecting your app internals?

We’ve just released Mission Control — Jobs v1.0.0, the dashboard and set of extensions to operate background jobs that we introduced earlier this year. This new version is the result of 92 pull requests, 67 issues and the help of 35 different contributors. It includes many bugfixes and improvements, such as: Support for Solid Queue’s recurring tasks, including running them on-demand. Support for API-only apps. Allowing immediate dispatching of scheduled and blocked jobs. Backtrace cleaning for failed jobs’ backtraces. A safer default for authentication, with Basic HTTP authentication enabled and initially closed unless configured or explicitly disabled. Recurring tasks in Mission Control — Jobs, with a subset of the tasks we run in production We use Mission Control — Jobs daily to manage jobs HEY and Basecamp 4, with both Solid Queue and Resque, and it’s the dashboard we recommend if you’re using Solid Queue for your jobs. Our plan is to upstream some of the extensions we’ve made to Active Job and continue improving it until it’s ready to be included by default in Rails together with Solid Queue. If you want to help us with that, are interested in learning more or have any issues or questions, head over to the repo in GitHub. We hope you like it!