Android App Released to Beta
An Android version of OurSharedPlace is built and running on real phones. It is in closed testing on Google Play, and we need a handful of testers to help us finish the job.
The iPhone app shipped in May. Since then the most common request we have received, by a wide margin, has been some version of the same sentence: my relative has an Android. A shared property is a group product.
So here it is. The Android app talks to the same server as the web site and the iPhone app, so there is nothing to migrate and no second copy of your data. A booking approved on an Android phone is approved everywhere, immediately.
What's in it
Close to all of it. This is not just read-only — you can create and change things from the phone.
- The shared calendar, three ways. Month, list, and a full year at a glance. Everyone's stays are color-coded. Request dates, approve or decline incoming requests, send an offer back to an outside inquiry, or block dates for cleaning and maintenance.
- Library. Photos, how-to articles, and file uploads. Take a picture of the new water heater label and put it where the next person will look for it.
- Tasks. To-dos and reusable checklists — the departure list, the winterize list — run from the phone while you walk the house.
- Contacts. The plumber, the cleaner, the nearest doctor, the neighbor with the spare key — grouped by role, with a tap-to-call button. This is the screen you want at 9pm when something is leaking.
- Messages and Requests. The members' discussion board, with pinned threads and unread markers, plus the guest request lane for questions and problems reported by people staying at the property.
- Finances. Shared expenses, revenue, and running balances. Log the propane bill from the driveway instead of from memory three weeks later.
- Members. See who is in the property, and invite the ones who aren't yet.
- Access Codes. Issue and manage the codes that let guests see their stay details without an account.
A look around
What “beta” means
- Expect rough edges on unusual screen sizes and on older Android versions. We have tested on far fewer devices than Android actually contains.
- A few things still send you to the web site rather than handling it in the app — billing and some of the deeper property settings.
- Invite links and shared links do not yet open the app directly. They open your browser. That is a known gap and it is on the list.
- Crash reporting is on. If the app falls over, we will usually see it before you tell us — but tell us anyway, because what you were trying to do is the part we cannot see.
Nothing about the beta puts your data at risk. It reads and writes the same records as the web site, through the same permission checks.
Your account carries over
Sign in with the same email and password you use on oursharedplace.com. Everything is already there — your properties, your members, your calendar. There is no separate Android subscription and no extra charge. Subscriptions are sold per property and cover everyone you invite to it, on whichever device they happen to own.
If some of your group is on iPhone and some on Android, that now works the way it always should have: same property, same calendar, same answer to “who has the house in July?”
Join the Android beta
Email us the Google account address attached to your Android phone, and we will add you to the closed test. You will get a link from Google Play, and the app installs like any other app.
info@oursharedplace.comFree for current OurSharedPlace subscribers. iPhone users, the app is already in the App Store.