App Inventor Goes Wireless!

We are very excited to be able to announce that...

Starting with today’s release of MIT App Inventor, v132, you no longer need a USB cable to connect your phone to your computer. We have added the option to connect the phone to the computer wirelessly. Not only does this avoid the cable, it also eliminates the often tedious process (on Windows) of finding, downloading, and installing drivers specific to your device. Now all you need now is a wireless (WiFi) network that your phone or device and your computer can both access.

The first step to use App Inventor wirelessly is to download the MIT AICompanion from the Google Play Store. You start this App like any other Android App. The Blocks Editor now has a new “WiFI” choice in the “Connect to Device” menu. When you select that you will receive a six letter code which you enter into the MIT AICompanion to connect the phone to the PC. You are also shown a QR Code which you can use If your phone has a camera and a Bar Code Scanning Application. You can find more information and detailed documentation in the wireless setup instructions.

The USB option is still there, same as before. But we expect that most App Inventor users will use the wireless method, which in general will be easier to set up and will give better performance. There may be some situations where wireless won’t work well -- such as when there’s no local wireless network, or the wireless network has poor performance. But we recommend that everyone start out by trying wireless to see if it works for you.

Again, we are enthusiastic about this new feature, and we hope this makes your App Inventor experience easier and more productive. Please give us your feedback on the forums and report any problems or issues you may encounter.

H*app*y Inventing
The MIT App Inventor Team