How do I unpublish my app (temporarily or permanently)?

Anvil Q&A
1

It’s great that you allow my app to be publish and it stays like that for a long time (or forever?).

But I’d like to bring it down as well sometimes (and publish it again) how do I do that?

Thanks,

Regards
Mani

2

In the project manager, at the bottom, there is a “View History” link :

anvil-view-history-1

You will see your published version in there, and there’s an un-publish button.

anvil-view-history
anvil-view-history.png467×830 28.9 KB

2 Likes
3

I had a look at the history there isn’t any Unpublish button, and the app is still being published, I don’t mind it but just for your info, please check the below:

And if you want to see the source its https://anvil.works/build#app:CYY7BIQW5MBXIOEU

If this help.

4

The word publish used by David refers to the version of the app, not to whether the app is publicly available.

Anvil apps can have two versions, published and development. When you run the app from the IDE you run the development version, when you access its url you run the published version. If you don’t click the publish button in the history then the two versions are the same.

It is impossible to un-publish an app as in turning it off.

You can assign a custom url, publish a version that you can show to the public, then work on the IDE and nobody will see what you are doing in your temporary version. Only you will see the automatically created development version.

If you really want to shut it down you can either publish a version with a form with a label that says that tha app doesn’t exist anymore (add a form with a label, make it the startup form, publish the app, delete the form and keep working on the development version) or you can clone your own app and delete the original.

5

You can make your app private! Just go to the Publish dialog, and click on the “Private” heading. That will give your app a secret URL that nobody else knows. (And if you’ve already shared that secret URL, you can hit a button to get a new secret URL, so all the old links stop working!)

Find out more in the docs: Choosing URLs

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6

Thanks for this @meredydd - although the specific option isn’t purely frictionless I think some have raised questions about but when I look at, it can be simplified and a bit more intuitive.