GitLab app for iPhone and Android: MergeBell on both stores

MergeBell, the GitLab app we make, reached the App Store on 26 October 2026, ten days after Google Play. It is one app on two platforms, built natively for each, in Swift for iPhone and in Kotlin for Android, with the same features and the same prices. Here is what’s the same, what’s different, and what to know if you move between an iPhone and an Android phone.

Where to get it

	iPhone	Android
Store	App Store	Google Play
Needs	iOS 26 or later	Android 12 or later
Since	26 October 2026	16 October 2026
GitLab	gitlab.com and self-managed 16.0 or later	gitlab.com and self-managed 16.0 or later

The same on both

• The free tier: the To-Do inbox, merge request review with line comments, approve and merge with squash and auto-merge, pipelines with live logs, retry, cancel and manual jobs, issues, search, files, widgets, an offline queue, Demo Mode, and push alerts for new To-Dos checked every five minutes. It covers one gitlab.com account and one self-managed instance.
• Pro: alerts every minute or within seconds with Instant mode, alert rules, muted projects and quiet hours, pipeline watches, following a running pipeline live, review drafts with Request changes, suggestions, code search, and every account in one inbox.
• The prices: $4.99 a month or $14.99 a year, with a first month for $0.99 for new yearly subscribers. No free trial.
• How your token is handled: it stays on the phone and is only sent to your GitLab, and there is no MergeBell account. Alerts use a separate read-only key, held by our server in Germany, which refuses any key that could write. The security page has the details.

What’s different

	iPhone	Android
Following a running pipeline (Pro)	A Live Activity on the Lock Screen, and in the Dynamic Island where there is one	An ongoing notification with a progress bar, one segment per stage; it asks to be a Live Update on Android 16
Where the two widgets go	Home Screen and Lock Screen	Home screen
Retry on a locked phone (Pro)	Face ID, Touch ID or the passcode first	Unlock the phone first
Alert notifications	Mark done and Open on To-Do alerts; Retry on a failed pipeline (Pro)	The same buttons, with each kind of alert on its own notification channel
Where the token is kept	The iPhone Keychain, this device only	Sealed with a key in the Android Keystore
gitlab.com sign-in	GitLab’s page in a system sign-in sheet	GitLab’s page in a Custom Tab
A company certificate authority	Install its root profile and trust it fully	Not trusted; the instance needs a public certificate
A GitLab our server can’t reach	Alerts checked on the phone when iOS lets the app run; they may be late	Alerts checked on the phone about every half hour when Android lets the app run; they may be late
Tablets	No iPad version: the App Store lists it for iPhone only	Side-by-side diffs on a tablet
Billing	Apple	Google Play

The actions are the same on both; what differs is how each phone shows them.

Pro in each store

Each store sells, renews and refunds its own subscriptions: Apple on iPhone, Google Play on Android. MergeBell has no account of its own to tie the two together, so a subscription stays with the store you bought it in: Pro bought on an iPhone doesn’t unlock MergeBell on Android, or the other way round. To have Pro on both, you’d subscribe in each store. Restore brings it back on a new iPhone signed in to the same Apple Account, or on a new Android phone signed in to the same Google account.

To cancel, on iPhone open Settings › your name › Subscriptions at least 24 hours before the period ends; on Android, open Google Play, then your profile › Payments and subscriptions › Subscriptions. You keep Pro until the period you paid for ends.

Switching phones

Your GitLab sign-in doesn’t travel in a backup: on both platforms the token is left out of backups and device transfers. On the new phone:

1. Install MergeBell from its store.
2. Sign in again, on GitLab’s page for gitlab.com or with a personal access token for a self-managed instance.
3. Turn alerts on again in Settings › Alerts.
4. If you have Pro: on a phone of the same kind, select Restore. Moving between iPhone and Android, Pro doesn’t move with you, so cancel it in the old store and subscribe again in the new one.

If you’re giving the old phone away, Settings › Delete alert data on it removes what our server holds for that phone, and signing out wipes the token and cache from it.

Which one to get

The one for the phone you have. The details per platform are in MergeBell for iPhone and MergeBell for Android, and every other GitLab app on both stores is in the best GitLab apps for Android and iPhone.