Install the Admin App

The admin installs as its own app. It gets its own icon, opens without the browser’s address bar and tabs, and sits on your home screen next to the public site rather than replacing it. The two are separate installs with separate icons, so a tap on one never lands you in the other.

Installed from your brokerage’s domain, the app carries your brokerage’s name: at Kroetch Property Group it is “Kroetch Property Group Admin”, shortened to “Kroetch Admin” under the icon. Installed from app.homestar.ink, it is “HomeStar Admin”.

Android and Chrome

1. Open the admin in Chrome and sign in.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the sidebar. Install app sits just above View Site.
3. Tap it and confirm when Chrome asks.
4. The icon lands on your home screen, an amber star on warm charcoal. The public site’s icon is an orange house, so the two are easy to tell apart.

Once it is installed, the button disappears from the sidebar. There is nothing left to offer.

Long-pressing the icon gives you three shortcuts straight into Pipeline, Leads and Notifications.

Desktop Chrome and Edge

The same Install app button at the bottom of the sidebar does the job. The admin opens in its own window with its own taskbar or dock entry, which is handy if you keep the pipeline open beside your email all day.

iPhone and iPad

Safari has no install button that a site can offer, so the route is the Share sheet. Tapping Install app in the sidebar opens a short reminder of the two steps.

1. Open the admin in Safari and sign in.
2. Tap the Share icon at the bottom of the screen.
3. Scroll down the sheet to Add to Home Screen and confirm.

Safari only, on iOS

Chrome and Firefox on an iPhone or iPad cannot add anything to the home screen. If you use one of those, you will not see the Install app button at all. Open the admin in Safari and follow the steps above.

What changes once it is installed

Tapping a lead alert opens the admin app rather than a new browser tab, which is the main reason to bother. Push notifications work the same either way; installing only changes where a tapped notification lands. If you have not turned the bell on yet, see notification history for what arrives and why.

The title bar and status bar follow whichever theme you have set in the admin, and they follow along when you flip the theme switch.

Nothing is locked to portrait, so a tablet turned sideways gives the pipeline board the width it wants.

The app covers /admin and nothing beyond it. View Site in the sidebar footer takes you to the public site, and that opens in your normal browser rather than inside the app. That is on purpose: the public site has its own install, and the two stay apart.

No offline data

The admin reads leads, the pipeline and listings live from the server, so there is nothing stored on the device to read without a connection. Lose the network and you get a No connection screen with a Try again button; it returns to the admin on its own the moment the connection comes back. Alerts still reach you while you are off, and open straight to the lead once you are back on.

Removing it

Remove it the way you remove any other app: long-press the icon on Android or iOS and choose to uninstall or delete it, or use the app’s own menu on desktop Chrome and Edge. Nothing on your account changes. Sign in through the browser and everything is where you left it, and the Install app button comes back if you want it again later.

If you do not see the button

The button only appears when the browser can actually install something, and it hides itself once the admin is installed. If it is missing, the usual reasons are that you are already installed, you are on iOS in a browser other than Safari, or you are on a browser that does not offer installs at all, such as Firefox on a desktop. Dismissing Chrome’s install prompt also takes the button away until Chrome offers again on a later visit.

For anyone running a local copy

Installing is a production behaviour. The service worker registers only in production builds, so a local development server never offers the button no matter which browser you point at it.

Related

• Notification history for the alerts that open into the installed app
• Configure your account for the rest of your per-person settings