General Text & Computing Company

Mobile App

On phones and tablets, General Text installs straight from your browser. There's nothing to download from an app store: open generaltext.org in your browser, sign in, and add it to your home screen. It then launches full-screen from its own icon, keeps working offline, and syncs in real time just like the desktop and web apps.

Under the hood this is a Progressive Web App (PWA). Once installed it runs in its own window without browser chrome, remembers your session, and reconnects and syncs automatically whenever you're online.

iPhone and iPad (Safari)

  1. Open generaltext.org in Safari. (On iOS, only Safari can add apps to the home screen.)
  2. Tap the Share button (the square with an arrow pointing up).
  3. Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen.
  4. Confirm the name and tap Add.

General Text now appears on your home screen with its own icon and launches full-screen, with a splash screen while it loads. Sign in with the same login you use everywhere else and your workspaces sync automatically.

Android (Chrome)

On most Android phones, Chrome offers to install General Text for you:

  1. Open generaltext.org in Chrome.
  2. Tap the ⋮ menu in the top right.
  3. Tap Add to Home screen (or Install app if it's offered), then confirm.

You may also see an Install prompt appear at the bottom of the screen. Either way, the installed app lands in your app drawer and on your home screen, and launches in its own window. Samsung Internet, Edge, and other Chromium-based Android browsers work the same way through their menu.

What you get

  • Its own icon and full-screen window. No address bar or browser tabs. It looks and feels like a native app.
  • Offline support. The app loads and lets you keep editing without a connection; changes reconcile automatically when you're back online.
  • Real-time sync. Edits flow live between your phone, your desktop app, the web, and your collaborators over the same sync engine.
  • A layout built for touch. Home is your workspace as one full-screen list: Search, Apps, Shared Files, Settings, then the apps. Everywhere else there is no bar at all; a single round button in the bottom-right corner (the fleuron) opens that list as a sheet, and tapping the workspace at the top of the sheet swaps to your other workspaces. With the sheet open the button turns into a house: tap it again to leave the app and go back to the workspace. Apps that want the corner can nudge the button aside.

Signing in

Sign in with the same login you use on the web and desktop, and every workspace you belong to shows up on your phone. There is no signed-out mode: your files are encrypted to your identity, so the app asks you to sign in and unlock rather than showing an emptied-out version of your workspaces. The session lasts a year, so this is a first-launch step, not a daily one.

See Getting Started if you don't have a login yet, or Desktop App for the native macOS, Windows and Linux app.