GitLab app for iPhone: MergeBell is now on the App Store

GitLab Inc. has never made an iPhone app. The request for one, issue 369066, has been open since July 2022 (more in does GitLab have a mobile app?). As of 26 October 2026, there is one more native option on the App Store: MergeBell, the GitLab app we make, which has been on Google Play for Android since 16 October. Here is what it does on iPhone, what it costs, and how to set it up.

What MergeBell does on iPhone

The free tier covers the whole review loop:

• A To-Do inbox. Review requests, mentions, assignments and failed pipelines from your GitLab To-Do List, grouped by project. Swipe one done.
• Merge request review. A file list, a unified diff made for the phone, line comments, replies and resolving threads.
• Approve and merge. Approve or revoke your approval, then merge with squash, delete the source branch, or set it to merge when the pipeline passes. Every reason it can’t merge yet is listed first.
• Pipelines and jobs. Live job logs, retry, cancel and play manual jobs.
• Issues, search and files. List, create, edit, close and comment on issues; search merge requests and issues; browse a repository’s files.
• Push alerts for new To-Dos, checked every five minutes, with Mark done and Open on the notification.
• Widgets with your To-Do count and a project’s latest pipeline, on the Home Screen and the Lock Screen.
• Offline. The last 20 merge requests you opened stay readable, and what you do offline is queued and posted in order when you’re back.
• Demo Mode, to try every screen on a sample GitLab before you sign in.

It covers one gitlab.com account and one self-managed instance, on GitLab 16.0 or later.

What’s built for iPhone

• A pipeline Live Activity (Pro). Follow a running pipeline, and its stages, the running job and the elapsed time stay on the Lock Screen, and in the Dynamic Island on iPhones that have one, until it finishes. With alerts on it updates by itself; with alerts off it catches up when you open the app.
• Unlock before Retry (Pro). Retry on a failed pipeline’s notification or on the Live Activity runs on the iPhone with your own token, and a locked iPhone asks for Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode first.
• Lock Screen widgets. Both widgets, the To-Do count and a project’s latest pipeline, go on the Lock Screen as well as the Home Screen.
• The Keychain. Your GitLab token is kept in the iPhone Keychain, on this device only, and is only ever sent to your GitLab.

What Pro adds, and what it costs

Pro is $4.99 a month or $14.99 a year, billed by Apple. New yearly subscribers can start with a first month for $0.99, after which the plan renews at $14.99 a year. There is no free trial. It adds:

• Alerts checked every minute, or Instant mode: a project webhook rings our server and the alert arrives within seconds (on projects where you’re a Maintainer or Owner).
• Alert rules per event, muted projects and quiet hours.
• Pipeline watches on a branch such as main: a push when its pipeline fails, recovers or waits on a manual job.
• The pipeline Live Activity.
• Review drafts, published as one review with Comment, Approve or Request changes.
• Suggestions: write them, and apply one or a batch in one tap.
• Every GitLab account and instance you use, in one inbox, and code search where your instance allows it.

To cancel, open Settings › your name › Subscriptions on the iPhone, at least 24 hours before the period ends. Prices are in US dollars and may differ in your country’s store.

Install and sign in

1. Get MergeBell from the App Store, or search for “MergeBell” in the App Store app.
2. Optionally, tap Try Demo Mode to look around first.
3. gitlab.com: sign in on GitLab’s own sign-in page, which opens in a system sheet.
4. Self-managed GitLab: enter your instance’s address and a personal access token with the api scope. The sign-in screen opens your instance’s token page with the name and scope already filled in. (Why api: GitLab token scopes explained.)
5. Alerts: in Settings › Alerts, select Turn on alerts, allow notifications, and give the alert server a read-only key. On gitlab.com, GitLab asks you to allow read_api access; on a self-managed instance, Create a read-only token opens your token page with the read_api scope filled in; create the token there and paste it back into MergeBell.

If your company’s GitLab uses a certificate from its own authority, install the company’s root certificate profile and turn on full trust for it in Settings › General › About › Certificate Trust Settings. If it’s only reachable over a VPN, the app works while the iPhone is on the VPN, and alerts for it switch to checks on the phone. More in using self-managed GitLab on your phone.

Your token stays on the iPhone

MergeBell talks to your GitLab directly, and there is no MergeBell account. Alerts are the one exception, because something has to check GitLab while the phone sleeps: they use a separate read-only key, and our server, which runs in Germany, refuses any key that could approve, merge or push code. The security page lists every GitLab endpoint it calls.

Other GitLab apps for iPhone

MergeBell isn’t the only one. GLab has a broad feature list with every action on its Pro subscription, Greenlight: CI is free but works with gitlab.com only, Comeet focuses on push and pipeline Live Activities, and Tanuki is a $0.99 purchase. We compare them in the best GitLab apps for Android and iPhone.

On Android too? MergeBell for Android has the same features and prices, and what differs between the iPhone and Android apps covers the details.