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Introducing Supernova - Turn Sketch designs into native mobile apps in minutes

over 3 years ago from , CEO at Supernova

Hello fellow designers (and developers),

I am Jiri, the CEO of Supernova. We are super excited to show what we've been working on for last 2 years.

Supernova aims to bridge the gap between developers and designers by automating the conversion of the Sketch mobile designs to the native mobile UI. It is currently capable of handling almost any mobile design that does not have some super-specialized UI.

The goal of Supernova is to help create pixel-perfect designs by automating the UI work that otherwise has to be created by hand - making it error prone and somehow boring after you've done a lot of the apps.

We are working heavily on making it to a platform that will allow not only developers but also the designers to make the apps - for now, at least the UI part, effectively offloading some work from the developers, if the need is there (I worked with a lot of startups in the past, any help to developers is always welcome).

You are read our introductory article on Medium: https://medium.com/@appsupernova/introducing-supernova-for-sketch-f92674171f7e

And we are currently no.1 on Product Hunt! https://www.producthunt.com/posts/supernova where we are responding to every question. I would like to do the same here - please AMA and don't hesitate to download the Supernova - it is free :)

20 comments

  • Lucas LazaroLucas Lazaro, over 3 years ago

    Hello Jiri, congratulations on the product. I gave it a spin during the last hour and it seems pretty robust, up until I tried to export the Android code, it fails to build on Android Studio for several reasons, one of which is the lack of handling accentuated characters on the resources files names (i.e. í, ã) and artboards starting with numbers (i.e. 1. Sign up).

    As I'm a Brazilian designer that includes words like ínicio on layers and always orders artboards with numbers, it seems that I'll have to create a specific Sketch project for Supernova with such restrictions in mind.

    Nevertheless I'll give it another try sometime to check the quality/style of the code it generates.

    Cheers.

    1 point
    • Frédéric AudetFrédéric Audet, over 3 years ago

      Same from a french perspective here "é à ù, ...".

      0 points
    • Jiri TrecakJiri Trecak, over 3 years ago

      We are definitely looking into it and will make sure that those characters will turn into something usable :) it is a small change really, one that has to happen of course.

      0 points
  • R. KamushkenR. Kamushken, over 3 years ago

    What about desktop designs?

    0 points
    • Jiri TrecakJiri Trecak, over 3 years ago

      Unfortunately, SN is not able to do those and it probably never will - the reason being that making a desktop app usually involves a lot of custom components and the segment itself is too niche, therefore probably not worth time investment at this point.

      0 points
  • Ivan C.Ivan C., over 3 years ago

    I've been waiting for something like this!

    0 points
  • Account deleted over 3 years ago

    I have tried it with 2 sketch files. It completely fails to import them. I just get funky distorted layers in your studio.

    0 points
  • Lee SureLee Sure, over 3 years ago

    Great! gonna have a try

    0 points
  • Powers Gray, over 3 years ago

    Does it do auto layout and set constraints?

    0 points
    • Jiri TrecakJiri Trecak, over 3 years ago

      Yes it does, and it is fully automatic (or you can do it manually, but that is not preferred really)

      0 points
  • Dustin Locke, over 3 years ago

    I want to believe this makes MVP's and advanced prototypes even easier. If that's the case, I'm very excited to give it a try.

    0 points
    • Jiri TrecakJiri Trecak, over 3 years ago

      Our ultimate goal is to make the work on the UI completely automated, no matter if MVP, prototype or actual release. Currently, it is definitely for MVPs and (extremely fast) prototypes, and once we polish the bugs we've encountered, we are confident for production UI as well

      1 point
  • Al LuccaAl Lucca, over 3 years ago

    hi Jiri, I was actually just checking your website. Congrats on the lunch! Question, I watched the video, the flow looks simple, you import a Sketch file into Supernova and "code it", but how is the transition in between supernova and xCode? Do you export a file? Not sure this was clear on the video. Tks!

    0 points
    • Jiri TrecakJiri Trecak, over 3 years ago

      Hello Al!,

      Thank you :) The export work very simply - when you are done "coding it" as you said, you select platform (for now, iOS and Android, with React Native support coming soon) and it will export XCode / Android Project, resources (images, fonts), UI (storyboards, XMLs) and the UI code if needed, and you can simply work on it further as a developer - it does not interrupt the flow in any way, just decreases time needed to build the first part (UI).

      For the designers I think it is important to note that at this point, you are not able to build entire app - you still need to code the "guts" - network and such, yourself. But our goal is to automate the rest, and allow the designers to do it themselves (at least to some extend)

      2 points
      • Al LuccaAl Lucca, over 3 years ago

        So, for designers, the real value is to cut one (very important) step out of the developers time, which is basically rebuilding the interface into xCode? Does that make sense?

        0 points
        • Jiri TrecakJiri Trecak, over 3 years ago

          For now, yes - we will also be enabling the "simulator" feature soon, so as a designer you can test it on a real device before you hand it over to the developer - and yes, you can hand over finished UI if you choose to :)

          0 points