Jul 12, 2022 jeff's Blog

A New Way to Connect the Companion

Release nb189 lays the infrastructure for a new method of connecting your browser to the companion app. This is approach replaces our current legacy connection, if you check the “Use Legacy Connection” on the Companion home screen.

If you do not use legacy connections, then nothing will change for you.

This new legacy approach provides two important features.

1. It will permit us to serve MIT App Inventor over a secure (https) connection.
2. On October 18^th, we expect Google to make a change to Google Chrome (and related browsers) which will break our old legacy connection method. This new approach will continue to work.

This new approach uses a pop-up window to permit the actual connection. When invoked you may get a dialog box which just asks you to click a “Continue” button. This is so Chrome (and Firefox) will allow the pop-up to open and do its work.

This new approach is available in MIT AI2 Companion version 2.64, currently in Beta Test.

To join the Beta Test, on your device go to:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=edu.mit.appinventor.aicompanion3

or from the Web go to:

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/edu.mit.appinventor.aicompanion3

-Jeff