Deprecate Android/iOS apps

Deprecate Android/iOS apps. This issue is to track our thoughts and plans to make the transition smooth. There hasn't been an actual push to deprecate yet.

There are existing bugs and we already added a message to the apps section/page about our efforts being focused on the webapp. We're adding new features to the webapp like threaded conversations which will be missing on these apps and the glaring bugs don't reflect well on us.

Our efforts are focused on the webapp which is the backbone of the mobile/desktop apps but mainly focused on the web experience. There are a number of bugs in these desktop/mobile clients and they spread the Gitter team too thin for us to give them proper attention. The apps are open-source if you want to tackle something particularly annoying to you. (desktop, iOS, Android)

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/merge_requests/1444

The future is probably improving the PWA experience so it doesn't feel any different after you add it to your homescreen, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1992

If the bugs ever get sorted, we can add them back to the app store, https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/gitter/-/epics/6

Questions

• If we remove the apps from the iOS app store, does it also stop existing users from using the app? We don't want affect existing users who find it good enough
• If we remove the apps from the Android Play store, does it also stop existing users from using the app? We don't want affect existing users who find it good enough
• How can we notify existing users of no future development?

Defer to the Element apps through Matrix

Because we are developing a native bridge between Gitter and Matrix, once available, you can use any Matrix client to access Gitter messages. There are nice glossy Matrix clients for iOS and Android that could be used.

• https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/element-ios
• https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/element-android

We only plan to bridge public rooms in our initial rollout so this doesn't solve every use case. But we do plan to make the bridge fully integrated to every conversation as time goes on.

Is the mobile browser webapp a suitable replacement?

PWA

See https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1992

Push notifications

See https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/-/issues/1992#push-notifications

Remediation

Iteration 1

• Remove links to apps from the apps page
  • https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/-/merge_requests/1776
• Add deprecation notice to gitter-android-app readme
  • -> gitter-ios-app!21 (merged)
• Add deprecation notice to gitter-ios-app readme
  • -> gitter-android-app!175 (merged)
• Warn existing users that there is no future development

Iteration 2

• Remove from iOS app store
• Remove from Android Play store

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Issue spawned from https://twitter.com/serialseb/status/1171061674092244992

cc @viktomas @jramsay