How do I share an Applane app?
Sharing an app is two separate things.
Who can open it: the audience
Section titled “Who can open it: the audience”The audience is chosen when the app is created and cannot be changed afterwards. Changing it would change the app’s manifest and template, which makes it a new app. The home screen shows an audience pill on each app: none for internal, amber for external, red for public.
| Audience | Who can open the app | Runs as | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internal (default) | Anyone signed in at your domain | The viewer | Google rejects any other login before the code runs. Send colleagues the URL; nothing else to do. |
| External (partner portal) | Named partner accounts, from an allowlist inside the app | The viewer, with no access to company data; reads go through a paired gateway | Published from the bot account. Needs external sharing allowed by IT. |
| Anonymous (public link) | Anyone with the link | The bot account | Only data that is already public may be shown; the platform enforces a grant table. Published from the bot account. |
External and public apps need the bot
Section titled “External and public apps need the bot”Partner-facing and public apps are deployed from the bot account, so they keep running when their builder leaves. Publishing one is a two-step: build it as yourself, then publish from a session signed in as the bot, with applane-admins@ as editor. The extension refuses to publish otherwise when enforcement is on.
If New app does not offer these audiences, your company turned them off, or IT has not allowed external sharing. Drive sharing policies, Settings.
Anonymous: public link
Section titled “Anonymous: public link”An anonymous app runs as the bot account for everyone who opens it, so anything it reads it reads with the bot’s rights. The platform only lets it read sources you explicitly grant, and refuses grants on data that is not already public. Treat a public app like a page on your website.
Who can edit the source: a Drive permission
Section titled “Who can edit the source: a Drive permission”The app’s source is an Apps Script project, which is a file in your Drive. Who can edit it is a Drive permission. The Share entry in the app menu opens Google’s own share dialog for that file. Add a colleague as editor and they can open the app in their own panel and keep building.
Applane never changes these permissions itself; it only reads them to show “Shared with: …”. Whether you can add someone outside the company is decided by your Workspace’s Drive sharing policy.
Working on the same app
Section titled “Working on the same app”When two people have the same app open, the panel shows who else is there and locks the composer for the second person until the first is done. That needs the coordination sheet your admin set in Settings.
Take-over
Section titled “Take-over”Every published app has applane-admins@ as editor, so IT can open, repoint or transfer any app without you. That is what makes an app outlive its builder: Offboarding.
For AI agents: llms.txt, llms-full.txt, or any page with a .md suffix.