Adalo 3.0 is here! Republish your apps for a 50->100+% speed lift!
After (just over) a year of working hard to deliver Adalo 3.0 (Adalo at 3x the speed) we’re delighted to announce an update that will drop current CPU usage on average by 40-70% on your current app**.** That means you should see a 50->100+% doubling in speed, assuming you’re up to date with our other improvements! If you haven’t republished your apps from before August 2024, your speed will be over 3x, especially so with a native app!
Here’s a quick side-by-side CPU comparison between the most recent version of Adalo and the latest version (if you republish). Below we’re showing what many of you have asked us to address: list loading speed!
**Before: After:**
Left is the previous version. Right is the latest version. Both simulations are run on Playwright, so the actions in the simulation are identical. Note that on the left, CPU load goes >100% because the app loading requires more bandwidth than the simulation was allocated. On the right CPU rarely gets above 50%, or if it does it drastically drops.
It isn’t just list loading, but the CPU costs to load any screen. Below we have a screen with an image and a list. While both are pretty fast, note the difference in CPU requirement. The black screen on the left was the most recent version of Adalo. The white on the right is the newer version (if you republish). To load the same screen, there is an entire spike of 103% of CPU that is removed by the latest infrastructure.
While most of the improvements in this latest version will automatically be applied when you republish, the React Native improvements require a toggle (especially as it may introduce bugs with some marketplace components that their developers have yet to update.) To activate the new architecture, please go to settings in your builder and scroll down to the React Native section and ensure the toggle is set to on:
Adalo 3.0 Status - Delivered 
Switchover infrastructure for stability, scalability and greater control
Overhaul and optimize 176 backend services
Optimize caching, especially around images and rendering to increase app speed
Provide automatic database indexing to reduce long-running database queries - ensuring fast responses with larger record sets.
Provide X-Ray–an AI tool to review builder layouts and audit potential known performance issues
Simplify the Adalo Builder codebase - removing unnecessary code and dependencies to increase speed and reduce bugs. This step has led to our CPU / speed improvements in this announcement.
React Native upgrade - phased roll out is underway (after 3 5 months of testing!)
Adalo’s code refactoring - re-writing what gets pulled into a default app and rewriting this to pull in only what your app utilises.
Having met our performance goals, we still have more work to do. We’re confident there are more speed and CPU gains we can deliver over the next 3 months to increase speed significantly.
Bring Your Own Database to Adalo!
Our CTO, Jason, did a walkthrough of how you can bring (pretty much any) datasource to Adalo. Here it is!
What about AI?
Yes, we’re on it! In our dev workshop, we’ve been busy creating what we think is a unique approach to AI building and one that we believe will make everyone very happy. We don’t want to give too many spoilers away here, but we’re going to kill three birds with one stone and deliver on multiple requests from our Makers.
We’ve been watching what other No Code and Vibe Coding platforms have been doing with AI, and see the struggles as well as the benefits. Our approach will keep the human in control and let you guide every step, should you so choose. Importantly, we’re keeping 3 things top of mind:
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The resounding message from Makers is that Adalo’s builder is the simplest and easiest canvas that exists, so don’t ruin it! We’re holding this simplicity as sacred and ensuring it won’t be lost with an AI roll out.
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AI can make wondrous things, but at the end of the day what you are making needs to conform to your vision. As such, the ‘last mile’ of creation needs to be human. That is, you must be easily able to follow along with what the AI has built and be able to easily change anything to make it resemble what you need. Prompting to get the final things perfect isn’t (currently) proving to be a great experience.
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AI creation can lead to ‘sharding’ - where reversions in its development can introduce incomplete patching and ultimately lead to something that breaks. We have a solution to that.
We’re really excited with where our alpha builds have gotten to using AI. We hope to be able to open up a beta to the Friends of Adalo soon! I get in trouble for setting dates, but my desire is to get this to the public before the end of the year.
Security
2FA Security
2FA was rolled out a couple of months ago, but in today’s world security deserves its own section. We can’t emphasise enough that everyone should have 2FA turned on for every service they can. This is available to all Makers.
To enable 2FA, login to your Adalo account and go to Settings. At the bottom of the screen you’ll see this:
After clicking the setup button you’ll be presented with a short list of instructions:
Once completed, 2FA will be enabled and your Adalo account will enjoy an additional layer of protection.
Please turn this on.
Other Features
AI-powered Chat
We continue to test and refine AI-based chat support to ensure you can obtain answers to your questions as quickly as possible. You can access AI chat by clicking on the question mark icon located at the bottom right of the app builder and clicking Adalo AI Chat Bot.
App Orientation Options
It’s now possible to set the desired app orientation. To change it from the default of both portrait and landscape, go to your App Settings panel and change the App Orientation setting:
Improved Scheduled Notification UX
We’ve improved many aspects of scheduled notification creation and management, designating which settings are required and which are optional, and improved input requirements for the scheduled date field.
Improved error handling for CSV imports
Uploading CSV data into Collections can sometimes be a confusing process, and so we’ve improved error handling in order to more effectively guide Makers when things go wrong.
Increased the Collections Display Modal Viewport
Now it’s easier to see more data when opening a Collections display table.
Lazy Loading for Social Media Lists
We’ve added lazy loading for the social media lists. This enhancement ensures faster loading times and a smoother experience when browsing through extensive lists of social media content.
Improved Date/Time Filtering
We identified and resolved a bug associated with filtering on dates and times which consistently spiked CPU and hurt performance. Profiling the app CPU and memory consumption both before and after the fix showed a dramatic improvement to performance.
Upgraded the Preview and Runtime Environments
The primary outcome here is a general performance, stability, and security improvement to how apps load in the previewer and how they generally execute regardless of target platform (iOS, Android, Web).
Infrastructure Updates
Running a service as complicated and popular as Adalo involves a constant drumbeat of background activity that, while critical, is unlikely to be noticed by Makers unless we tell them about it. So although it’s likely TMI we’ll recap it anyway just for completeness sake.
Smaller App Bundles
We’ve also poured a lot of effort into reducing the size of app bundle sizes through smarter dependency inclusion during the app packaging stage. Some of this work is already in production and has reduced app bundle sizes by several percentage points. This brings many benefits, including faster installation times, faster load times, and reduced deinstallations due to storage concerns on older devices.
Migrated Android build Infrastructure
This migration was one of the very last pieces of the puzzle regarding our almost year long move to faster and more stable infrastructure.
Removed Remaining App Action Overage Code
Although we disabled app action billing overages months ago, some of the code used to manage it had been hanging around inside the code base, so in an ongoing effort to simplify and streamline Adalo everywhere and anywhere, we’ve removed that logic. Bad ideas be gone!
And then??
We’re working towards:
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AI building. With Adalo 3.0 delivered, this becomes our main effort.
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Google SSO
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Adalo Function Hub. A way to access API endpoints to manipulate numbers, strings, dates, times and more - but without relying on an external tool like Zapier or Make. Still in early stages of development.
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Adalo Experts Retest & Retraining. We’ve received most of our app submissions from Experts, and we’ll be creating retraining to better align our community to how Adalo can create performant applications. There will also be a number of Experts removed from our listings.
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Revamping our Google Sheets connection. Makers want to use Google Sheets as a collection in their apps, and so we’ve (almost) completely rebuilt the connection to serve as a database for you.
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Super secret project - still remaining a secret for now!
With Adalo 3.0 rolling out, we’re excited to turn to a new chapter, but a lot has happened since I personally talked with many of you. I’d love to reconnect and hear about what you’re building (and what you’re not building) + how Adalo can better support you. So please find some time on my calendar! We’ve a lot of dev bandwidth that is now freeing up after the yuge overhaul, so we want to ensure we’re aligned to what you all need!
James & the Adalo team
