CodeSandbox
Reviews and Complaints

After trying out CodeSandbox for iOS, I encountered severe performance issues that made it virtually unusable. The platform lacked the necessary support for iOS, leading to a frustrating experience. I would not recommend using CodeSandbox for iOS based on my disappointing encounter.

Great software but autocomplete sometimes lags. Still needs a way to install packages when needed. Portrait mode only, ohh come on most devs use landscape mode too it will be nice feature to add on there. Also when going to documentation will be great to save where i was at on the page save where my scroll was left off at and not scroll back and see the whole documentation again. My list could keep going email if you want more feedback thanks for the great work.

The iPad excels at being a tool for creatives. If you are a creative then it’s likely you also enjoy to build. Building with code on the iPad is something severely hampered by the limitations of the OS. Play.js smashes through many of those limitations and provides the capability to learn, and build JavaScript applications. I mean full Node.js, React, VueJS apps! With patience and time you can build almost anything. It’s not perfect because of the OS, but it’s very functional.

I’ve only just begun using the app, but thus far it looks fantastic (material darker “esque” theme looks great), it’s organized well & has some pretty unique features - like the DOM inspector/dev tool that you don’t see too often (if ever - though I have heard of an app or two that claim to have this, I can’t personally vouch for if they do, nor how well they work in comparison), and everything that I have ran appears to work properly as far as my test code snippets are concerned.

Keep up the great work!

The setup for this is amazing! Absolutely love the new design! The old design felt tacky, like it wasn’t made for iPad OS. As a full time programmer, I am blown away with what they have been able to accomplish for this application! It has came a long way in a year, can’t wait to see where it will be a year from now! Please developers keep up the great work! I think you all have set the standard for how straightforward an IDE can be on the iPad! I have a few ideas that I would love to share with you for new features and improvements!

I’m not an avid developer by any means, however I do think there are serious issues with the app. I have numerous functions I’ve created that consistently return correct results to the console in repl.it, but show absolutely nothing within the console of play.js. I consistently either have to repeatedly press stop and play and or completely force quit the app and re-open for it to work and I can’t even get that to work all of the time. Also syncing across multiple devices would be really nice, it’s kind of crazy an app like this doesn’t have that?

This app is really the only option for anything slightly resembling modern web development. It supports package installs, has some intellisense, and can package.json scripts. Running a NuxtJS app with auto reload in the browser works. The only other way on iPad to accomplish this is a terminal to a remote Linux machine, so this app is top of class.

Of course it’s a pretty barebones editor at the moment, very few theming options, installing packages is wonky, scripts fail 50% of the time, the git features are basic at best. But all that said, it’s an excellent start.

Really, really solid app. I sincerely appreciate the dev’s dedication to making this better on a consistent basis as well. I’m a Vue user, so the recent addition of Vue syntax highlighting is a huge plus for me. Keep in mind, that if you do plan on using Vue, you’ll still need to come up with the boilerplate yourself and then add it in. The beauty is that this app does support node packages, so you can run just about everything in here so long as it’s based on that.

Update: Dev replied and added a boilerplate for Vue, so getting started is easier than ever. Thank you, nakiostudio!

I really love the design, layout, and functionality of the app. I feel like it has the opportunity to replace a portion of my workflow, but there is a large area where I feel could be improved.

The React Native support is great to have, and I understand the great limitations of iPadOS compiling and so forth with RN. But it may be possible to support the Expo workflow since they already have an app and there isn’t any native components needed to support. If you could add that support, then this would be the app I think a lot of developers have been waiting for. React Native development on the go!

I've been looking for something i could mess around with js on my iPad Pro, and this is the closest thing I've used to get the job done. Ive tried so many different text editors/IDEs and the fact this one has npm availability is awesome! A couple of things... 1) It would be cool if there was code completion when typing, I'm so used to editors that know you're not trying to create another string when closing the string closure on a variable. 2) if there was some type of console would be rad (not a deal breaker). Definitely appreciate the work that went into this app and will continue to enjoy it! Keep up the good work.

Use case: Programming a Discord bot as a novice programmer.

What to hate: So far, the only issue I’ve encountered is a problem with the ytdl-core package. My Discord bot can run off this IDE (for testing), but breaks the bot without any info as soon as I try playing music.

What to love: This IDE will resolve packages automagically (with confirmation) if need be which is amazing! GitHub support is to my needs, clean layout and design, runs in the background if you want it to, and plenty of quality of life settings (font size, font, theme color, change the app icon, etc).

From a mobile IDE, this is amazing! Just not perfect.

I downloaded this app because the online ide at CodeSandbox was not auto-saving, no view was appearing when I clicked the run/view button, and the free account file button was also inactive (so there was no way to save). So, all my code disappeared after I signed out, although the blank sandbox was still there.

I emailed tech support, but they were not helpful- they said that the app auto-saves with each key change automatically and I must have downloaded a different app or I had an unstable internet connection (none of which is true). I was super excited about making a mini app project with this, so I am very disappointed.

When I started learning to code, the simplicity of this app helped me focus on my code instead of allowing me to get distracted in 80 directions trying to customize it to perfection with unnecessary plugins. Now that I’m a (only slightly) more mature developer, this same simplicity and code focus helps me write clean, readable code. Its bare-bones git implementation means I’m not dealing with git issues in-app; I write, commit, and push, and go on writing. And it’s pretty! It’s well-designed with a clean, attractive interface that makes me want to use it daily. I cannot recommend this enough to anyone who wants to be able to write JavaScript anywhere.

This app is awesome. It runs buttery smooth and the UI/UX is slick. I will still be doing my serious development on my MacBook Pro, but it’s really nice to have this on my IPad. It’s great for prototyping and getting ideas built on the go. I don’t have any doubts that you could use it for more serious development but the keyboard and lack of mouse makes it more time consuming and tedious. Although, given the form factor of the devices it runs on, this is as good as it gets.

Also, haven’t used it too much yet but will be curious if you can install npm modules and do standard JS package management with a package.json file. Update to follow after more time using the app.

Props to the developer! Nice work!

Thanks for adding the undo capabilities for iPhone! I got a few more requests if you have time that I'd like to see :)

1) Highlight+tab just erases what's highlighted. Would be cool to indent instead.
2) Would like to see the keyboard have more keys (or make them swipeable for other options). Keys desired: /
3) Autofill for RN components. So typing V would let you select:

Also would be cool if it added required props like for Button: typing B allows you to add:

{

}} />

Something like that.

4) I'm not sure why this didn't work earlier today, but I tried to add an inline style and the spread operator didn't work. Ie:

Thanks for all your hard work :) Makes app building while at work viable :D

Thanks for the fantastic app! I can now make AWS API calls after installing aws-sdk dependency, loading my access keys in a file, then running this code...

var AWS = require('aws-sdk');

AWS.config.loadFromPath('./config.json');

AWS.config.update({region: 'us-west-2'});

s3 = new AWS.S3({apiVersion: '2006-03-01'});

s3.listBuckets(function(err, data) {

if (err) {

console.log("Error", err);

} else {

console.log("\n\nList S3 Buckets:\n\n", data.Buckets);

}

});

Please consider adding more text editor features and keyboard shortcuts like:

Multi-cursor
Line selection., e.g. cmd-l
Move selected line(s) up/down
Panes (vertical and horizontal and ability to maximize)
Go to line number
Go to symbol
Fold code
String selection, e.g. cmd-d
Custom keyboard shortcuts
Toggle console (completely hidden)
iOS shortcut support
External monitor support (not just mirroring)
I will pay more for these!

Tried a handful of the CodeSandbox sandboxes, especially the very basic ones without heavy vue.js or react.js dependencies, they all fail to run out of the box, like the “Plain JavaScript” sandbox.

The play.js built-in Sandboxes run, but you only have two options: An interactive console (OK!) and an entire react.js app that expects an index.jsx file. (Heavy!) No in-between, e.g., a browser running a plain index.js file.

This wouldn’t be so bad because you can e.g. install the http module, paste in a basic server, and run it.

Unfortunately, the IDE part fails some basic tests. You can indent with tab, but you can’t de-indent with shift+tab. Also, selecting lines and attempting to indent or de-indent overwrites the lines instead of adjusting the lines’ indents. Granted, text editors are hard and finnicky to get right! But that’s why I was looking for an IDE app and not a plain text editor. In this state it’s not worth it for me, too many hiccups to get something simple running :(

A few small bugs are forgivable but this is a PAINFUL mobile editor to use without a keyboard.
I hold it to a high standard having used Pythonista for several years. Admittedly play.js has great package integration, but they should copy a LOT from Pythonista before this is a touch friendly IDE.

My first experience:
Tap keyboard is almost slower than using native (double equals requires to press and drag actions for instance). Often will insert wrong character as 4 chars are stacked into one button and selected with a drag. This pain is compounded by the auto insertion of a closing brace, which is fine, but removing the first brace doesn’t remove the second which means I have to press into the editor to move the cursor to delete the auto added closing brace of the wrong type, which is downright terrible with nested braces and one bracket mixed in.
Very little contextual capabilities, Autocomplete is about it. Would like to see a keyboard that prompts a brace or paren appropriately.

I love it and I’ve found it so easy to use! It heals me when I’ve got a quick thing I wanna check and also when I am helping a friend with a question.

I’m ramping up to possibly use this for work too.

Some things I’d love are:
1) Let me change the default character on a quick press of the programmer bar items. For example the ‘ “ ` = grouping, I’d prefer = to be the default on a single tap.

2) Let quick taps on the bar items quickly cycle through options rather than add loads of the default character (like how you do with old phones to get the ABC’s) currently a quick tap to get to the = i the aforementioned grouping will yield ‘’’’’’’’ instead.

3) Let us alter the programmer bar grouping locations as well as the groupings themselves, and maybe even their background color too, I love the dark theme but that white text on very light grey background is rough.

4) Provide a quick share button that captures the selected code (or all code if no selection) already wrapped with ```js ``` markup to paste to somewhere like Discord, maybe even let it access your desired app from right there to share, same way you can quick share a Reddit page to a friend in Discord, etc.

5) Maybe change that box icon for Git to be the regular Git logo symbol we see everywhere else?

The original UI for this application was clever, but in addition to not complying with Apple's guidelines, it also had some strange quirks, such as the inclusion of a yellow "minimize" button in the windows that seemed to cause windows to just disappear without a trace!

Weirdly enough, the new UI still has this "mis-feature". I understand why the creators might provide windows of this sort as part of the framework for simulating applications created with play.js, but having the "minimize" button in the app's current setup does not make much sense.

A bigger issue, and really the one that takes this down to four stars for me: In the original version of the UI, one could "tile" windows on the screen, so half the screen could contain the code editor while the other half contained the Node.js or React Native reference. Even though I bought this tool for the Node.js features, the coolness of this setup actually motivated me to finally start learning React Native, as well! But now it seems like one can only have a Code Editor window or a Reference window open.

Again, I understand that the developers had to change from a windowing system to something closer to a "panes" system in order to avoid running afoul of Apple's UI rules, but at the moment this still feels a bit like a half-done fix.

I will continue to play with this tool, and I really look forward to future updates to it. I just hope that the next update is a big step forward so that my next review will be a five-star one!

Too much cloud focus, wish it’s can be more offline

Requires a GitHub account to use. Can’t just edit local files

I need to be able to run simple stuff like ‘npm run start’ to make this app useful for myself.

I think the app is good but I can’t find a fix and it says that it can’t connect to the server.

I can’t seem to find the Undo button in the editor. Since I can’t find it, it’s a deal breaker. All of the functionality in the app is negated by the fact that I can lose (and have lost) all of my work with one mistake.

Seems like it could be something great to have, but it has lost my work, multiple times. There are no "save", or "commit" buttons, to manually ensure changes are preserved. Sometimes things are as I left them; other times, they are arbitrarily reverted to some previous state. Also needs some UI enhancement

I want to like it but using repl.it in the browser is less buggy atm.

The developer suggested I press the globe button. I’ve been doing that all along - nothing! It has great features but if you can’t see your results along the way...

I cannot select lines and correct code highlighted in red to indicate inline errors such as syntax errors or missing imports.

Sandbox learning with this latest app is straight up infuriating.

This app is very buggy. I can’t edit my React Native app without my project being cleared and my main document emptied. I even uninstalled and re-installed and I can’t even add a new project without it wiping everything. 1 Star until fixed.

As someone who’s partially colorblind, and can’t see small text very well anymore, this app isn’t usable for me. I couldn’t find any app settings that would allow me to increase the editor’s font size, or change the color scheme to something I can see properly.

It’s really hard to run an app you just made. Lacks iOS Shortcuts or Widgets integration.

Also node does not exit when using Promises.

Also not all node is functionality works. For example axios reports that adapter is not found. There are also other problems when handling http requests.