Note: This article only applies to communities with access to the web or mobile app experience and, therefore, does not apply to Email-Only communities.

Overall, the web experience and mobile app are very similar. The core functionalities all appear in both platforms, and user activity (such as reading content, interacting with content, and editing a profile) synchronizes across the platforms. Most of the differences between the two platforms are due to different platform standards or inherently different platform user experiences, such as available screen area, touch screen vs mouse clicking, etc. Wherever possible, we strive for parity.

To help you communicate accurately with your users about important functionalities in these platforms, this article highlights areas where the web experience and mobile app are different. This article does not cover every detail but should cover some of the most relevant differences for your communication strategy and/or legal concerns.

User-Generated Content

The submission process is very similar between the web and mobile app. Both mobile and web users can submit all types of content. 

When posting an article from the mobile app, only the article title and body can be edited, not the description. The article body will be used as the description. To edit these sections independently, create your article in the web experience.

In-App Notifications 

The same types of notifications are displayed to users across both the web and mobile app. The only discrepancy is where the notifications are accessed on each device. 

In-app notifications are displayed under the Assistant icon on mobile. Users can tap the speech bubble icon to from the bottom navigation bar to view and clear their notifications.  

On web, if users have 1 or more notifications, they will see a notification icon in the web header. Users can click the bell notification icon to open the notification list.

Share Content to Social Networks

When a user shares content from your platform to a social network, the main difference is what applications they can share to.

Mobile - share to any app on the user's phone that is compatible with sharing the content (including major social networks, email, etc.).

Web - share to X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Legal Concerns - GDPR, CCPA, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy

Navigation in the web experience and mobile app is a little different, due to screen size and standard practices on the different platforms. Users do not report any issues with finding the following items, but if you want to help users navigate to these features the directions would be a little different. The following Member-focused Knowledge Base articles outline how to reach the feature (or document) and are accessible without logging into the Knowledge Base:

• Export All My Personal Data (GDPR and CCPA)
• Erase All My Personal Data (GDPR and CCPA) 
• Review Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Content Digests in the Feed

To help users discover interesting content, we have a Content Digests section dedicated to pulling in a short list of popular and engaging content. On the web, this valuable content appears in the personalized feed (called Latest).

Due to different screen sizes and ease of navigation on a mobile app, the mobile app (3.6.0 & up) has only one section named Trending.

Session Management

Due to how cookies are managed, web sessions are shorter than mobile app sessions. In other words, web experience users may need to sign in more often than mobile app users.

Icons and Other Details

Some icons and exact appearance will be different due to platform standards. For example, iOS and Android have very different share icon standards. Therefore, screenshots of iOS, Android, and the web will not always map perfectly to each other.

Taking Screenshots 

iPhone users and Android users on mobile app version 5.0+ can take screenshots.

At this time, due to limitations on iOS and within browsers on desktop devices, we are unable to restrict screenshots taken within the mobile app or on a desktop device.