What is Glide Apps?

GlideApps is a website that enables you to create your own app from a Google Sheet. It takes about 5 minutes to learn how to create an app, but it’s likely that you’ll only need to spend 10 minutes creating an app.

What Do I Need to Build an App?

Building an app with Glide Apps is easy. You need an account with them, a Google Drive account so you can use Google Sheets, and some time. There are free and paid options available. Most people will be fine using the free option. You can even share your app with others using the Glide Apps platform. ..

To follow along with the tutorial, you’ll need to create a Glide Apps account. If you don’t have a Google Drive account, please go create one now.

If you want your app to be more complex, learning Google Sheets is a great option. It’s much easier than learning to program, so this is still an excellent option for most people.

Google Sheets is a spreadsheet application that allows you to easily track and manage data. It’s similar to Microsoft Excel, but has some unique features. For example, you can easily add and remove columns, change the order of data, and more. If you’re comfortable with Excel, you’ll pick up Google Sheets quickly.

How Can I Build an App with Glide Apps?

Do you want to learn how to make an app? Glide Apps is here to help! In this workshop, we’ll cover the basics of app development, from designing your user interface to building in features. Afterward, you can take what you’ve learned and create an app of your own. ..

Our book lending app is going to track our books and our friends, and match up which friend borrowed which book, and when.

The front page of our website will list our books. When you click on a book, it will take you to the book’s detail page. ..

The book detail page will show us all the details of our books, which friend has it, and when they borrowed it. Next to the friend’s name will be buttons that allow us to call or text our friend to remind them to return our book.

The friends page will allow us to add, or maybe remove, friends along with their e-mail and phone number. Let’s begin by adding my friend, John.

Create a Google Sheet

We’ll enter the title of each book we read into the first column, and the date we finished reading it into the second column. We’ll then add any notes or thoughts we have about the book into the third and fourth columns. Finally, we’ll add a fifth column to track how many times we’ve recommended this book to others. ..

  1. Books - the name of the sheet becomes the name of the page within the app. Use simple, descriptive names that make sense.
  2. Home - this is where you’ll find your bookshelf and all of your books.
  3. Add Book - this is where you’ll add new books to your shelf or edit an existing book.
  4. Edit Book - this is where you can change the title, author, or rating of an existing book. ..

Title: Books Author: Format: Paperback Price: $14.99 Photo: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b2/a8/c7/b2a8c7ef5e4d3fcdcbfbcee1a4f6d0fcbdff--thirty-one-party-thirty-one.jpg Date Loaned to Friends: Name: Date Loaned: Title, Author, Format, Price, Photo, Loaned_ To=Friends:Name, and Date Loaned.

Glide Apps can read the equation in that one column and figure out who you loaned the book to. It will then associate their name, phone number, and e-mail with the name, phone number, and e-mail of that friend in your Friends sheet. ..

Name: E-mail: Phone:

Add Data to your Google Sheet

Adding books to your Book Tracker spreadsheet is a great way to help you make and test your app. You can add as many books as you want later. ..

The Photo column needs a little explanation. You can find an image of the book you want on the Internet. Right-click on the image and select Copy Image Address. Paste that in the Photo column. You’ll see later that our app will show the image. If you want to use your own pictures, you’ll need to have them hosted somewhere online.

This article is about a loan that was given to a person and then later repaid. The loan is not mentioned in the article.

Name: E-mail: Phone: Friend Name: E-mail: Phone:

Go back to the Books page. Now you can fill in the Loaned_To and Date Loaned fields. The name you put in the Loaned To field must be identical to what’s in the Friends sheet. That is what Glide will use to link the two together. If they aren’t identical, Glide assumes that they aren’t the ones that need to be linked. ..

To get started, we need to create a new project in Glide Apps. ..

Creating the App in Glide Apps

Create an app with Glide Apps.

The New App button on the left side of the screen will start the process of creating a new account with our company.

A window will open that is tied to our Google Drive account. Here, we’ll select the Google Sheet from which we want to make our app. Double-click on Book Tracker. Glide Apps will start making the app for us. It will take about a minute, probably less.

The app appears to be almost complete, but we can make it better by adding features.

Setting the App Logo and Information

The Book Tracker is a great way to keep track of your reading progress.

That will open a toolbar on the right where we can customize the app’s icon and name. Click on Change under the icon, and search for a suitable emoji. You can select almost any emoji that there is. Let’s select a book. ..

You can now change the background color of the icon. We went with a blue/purple color, but you can choose any of the colors. ..

We’ve now got a professional looking logo for your app. So easy! ..

Our app has three different themes: Light, Dark, and Inverse.

You can give your app a unique web address by using the Glide App Maker. This will allow only one person to use it, so make sure to choose something different than the URL you give your book. ..

This is an area where you can write a brief description of your app.

To set the privacy of our app, we have four options: Public, Public with e-mail, Password, and E-mail Whitelist. This allows us to determine who can have access to our app. For demonstration purposes, we’re setting it to Public. ..

Our chat icon is a direct line to help us find the answer we need. If we don’t find the answer we need, we can send a message to the good folks at Glide Apps. They’re responsive and helpful.

The Books Page

To add a new book to our library, we’ll need to click on the Screens in the left toolbar. In the right toolbar, we’ll see a button for Add item.

If you click on the plus sign (+) in the top-right corner of our app, a form will appear that we can use to enter more books. ..

We can see that a friend’s name is listed under the book, with an arrowhead to the right of it. Tapping on this brings us to the details page for that friend. ..

We can email, text, or call our friend to see how they’re enjoying the book, or to ask for it back.

The Friends Page

We can see that our friends are listed in the order they are shown on the Friends page. The first row is our friends of course, followed by our friends from other countries. In the second row we have some of our newer friends, and in the third row we have some of our more established friends.

We’ve got more than three friends, so let’s make the app allow us to add more friends, just like we made it allow us to add more books. In the right toolbar, click on the Add item button. We’ll see a + sign in the top-right corner of the Friends page. Clicking on that opens a form that allows us to add more friends.

App Navigation

Navigation in the left toolbar should be renamed to Main Menu. ..

In the right toolbar, we see the app pages listed. Let’s change the icon for each page to be a bit more meaningful. Click on Change under circle icon for Books. We can search for a suitable icon here. Let’s choose the Book Open icon.

On the Friends page, change the icon to a heart. This is associated with love and affection.

Apple or Android?

We’ve already shown you how to view the app on an iPhone, but what about Android? If you click on the Apple icon near the top-right of the app preview area, it will show you what it will look like on most Android devices.

Sharing the App

Congratulations! Your app is now ready to be shared with people. Glide makes it easy to do so with Share App in the left toolbar. You can share it on Twitter, Facebook, via e-mail, or post a link on your website. ..

What Will Your App Be?

The Glide Apps app provides simple and more complex example apps that you can take apart to learn from or get inspiration from. You could make an app for your gaming guild, or a directory of local restaurants, or whatever strikes your fancy.

If you want to create an app, Glide Apps can help. We hope you give us a try and let us know what you create. ..