AppStudio, Esri’s solution that enables anyone to quickly and easily build and deploy apps running on the ArcGIS Platform, has received an update. According to the dev team, features have been progressively added to AppStudio for ArcGIS Desktop Edition now at Release 2.1. Recall, with AppStudio mappers & GIS Professionals can use the tools to convert maps into beautiful mobile apps for Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux.
According to Esri’s AppStudio team, this release brings a lot of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes, all to improve your app development experience and to provide more functionality to implement into your apps. Look for improvements and new functionality from the AppStudio Desktop, AppStudio Player, templates, the AppStudio Framework and more. We stumbled onto a fine update on Geonet (the Esri online Community) that explains some of the new features waiting for you in 2.1:
- The AppStudio Desktop (See image above) – Many new features and handy improvements for Desktop are also included, such as Material Design layouts, a new community panel in the Desktop Gallery, support for building UWP apps using cloud Make tool, ability to delete apps both locally and in the organization, ability to share apps directly from the Desktop
- AppStudio Player enhancements – login more securely using the newly added biometric authentication functionality (Touch ID)
- Templates – All the three templates – Map Viewer, Map Tour and Quick Report have introduced new features, enhancements, and improvements in user experience.
Highlights of AppStudio 2.1 are as follows:
- New community panel added to Desktop
- UI/UX improvements for AppStudio Desktop tools
- New Material Design layouts
- Map Viewer template supports secured Web Maps and offline map packages (MMPK)
- Quick Report template supports audio and video attachments
- AppStudio Player improvements – Biometric, IWA authentication
- New Plugins in AppFramework – Biometric Authentication, Secure Storage, High Accuracy GPS, and Inter-app share
- Support for non-runtime apps to run on Windows Universal Platform (Beta)
- Underlying Qt framework has been upgraded from 5.8 to 5.9.1
Credit: Esri GeoNet

Note, there’s also a Beta in the works with plenty of new and improved functionality. Some of the things you can expect in this rlease include:
- Text-to-speech
- Local notification
- Vibration
- SQL storage
- Background location collection
- Video effects
- Promises
- Biometric authentication
- Universal Windows Platform
- and more!
Recall, once you start building awesome apps you can take advantage of our Admin Tools for ArcGIS Online (Free, Pro, or Portal) to help manage your data, teams, maps, and apps.
See Also these useful resources:
- The appstudio-beta tag on the AppStudio GeoNet blog
- On Twitter @AppstudioArcGIS
- AppStudio Apps showcase Gallery (GitHub)
- AppStudio for ArcGIS Home
- AppStudio for ArcGIS Update to 2.1 – Build once, deploy across multiple platforms

From the Esri Startup Team:
AppStudio for ArcGIS is better than ever with new features, enhancements, and improvements!
Discover what’s new in Version 2.1 at https://t.co/nAYxlUuxtz @arcgisapps #Esri #TheScienceofWhere #ArcGIS pic.twitter.com/bkenVHC0vp— Esri Startup Program (@EsriStartups) November 23, 2017