Developer resources

A gameplay screenshot from Christian Waadt's Airship Combat 3D

Are you tired of the same old apps on KaiStore and BananaHackers Store? Do you have a creative idea for a KaiOS app but don’t know how to make it happen? This is the place where you can find useful documentation to help you learn how to develop apps for the platform (thanks Bing AI!)

Before you start developing KaiOS apps:

  • KaiOS is an operating system that runs on web technologies. KaiOS does not support Android apps, despite using Android HIDL for hardware compatibility. Instead, it uses a forked version of Boot-to-Gecko (B2G) from the discontinued Firefox OS as its core rendering engine. Think of it as ChromeOS on phones with physical keypad.
  • As such, apps on KaiOS are built with web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—not native as Java or Kotlin but has similar performance—and are executed by Gecko runtime, though you can use the same tools and frameworks that you use for web development, such as React or TypeScript.
  • Be wise: even though KaiOS devices are limited on hardware features as they’re usually targeted towards emerging markets, especially on the amount of RAM, but if you use it smartly, they will provide enough CPU and GPU to power your games.

Getting started on KaiOS development

API documentations

Snippets

Testing your app (KaiOS 2.5)


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