We are proud to announce the first iOS app developed completely in-house at 37signals: the official Basecamp app for iPhone.

Get it now for free on the App Store.

Basecamp on mobile devices

Here’s what you can do with it:

  • Check in on your projects from anywhere. Basecamp for iPhone shows you the latest news on each project.
  • Jump in on a discussion and post your thoughts.
  • View progress as team members complete to-dos and upload files.
  • Look up anything in a project. Refer to a document or make a decision no matter where you are.

We discovered it’s very important on the phone to make sharp priorities early in the design.

Our top priority was fast access to news. You’ll find the app makes it addictive to check in and feel the pulse of your projects throughout the day. You can quickly bounce in and out of projects. Project screens on the phone show the latest news first rather than static project contents.

Our second priority was to offer the full depth of Basecamp. After you dip into a project, you can go deeper and browse its contents. A menu offers all the project sections like Discussions, To-dos, Files, and Documents.

Iterating on iOS is tricky. The medium isn’t as flexible as HTML and CSS. To cut this down we used a hybrid approach. The page stacking behavior and navigation menus are native, while the rest of the screens are web views. Prototyping on Paper came in handy for evaluating native design ideas before committing to code.

We also used some shiny new tech. The app is built in RubyMotion. We barely touched Xcode. Look forward to some posts from Nick for details on that.

We’ve been using the app constantly since we first had a prototype in our hands. I’m thrilled to share it with you today. It’s available now for free in the App Store.

Download on the App Store
  • NOTE: Basecamp for iPhone requires an account on the new Basecamp (released March 2012). Basecamp Classic is not supported.