Arduino Releases a New App Lab for the Arduino UNO Q, Promises Big Quality-of-Life Gains

The Arduino team has announced a new version of its App Lab, designed for easy application development on the Arduino UNO Q single-board computer — with new support for exporting and importing complete apps as zip archives.

We’re excited to introduce a new version of Arduino App Lab, designed to make building, testing, and sharing applications easier and more secure," the Arduino team writes of the new release. "This update centers around enhancing the flexibility of App Lab, so you can focus on what’s important: building – whether you’re a student, educator, or experienced maker working with the Arduino UNO Q (now available in the 4GB variant). The release brings five big upgrades, each aimed at simplifying your workflow and unlocking new possibilities."

The App Lab was launched alongside the Arduino UNO Q, the first in the UNO family to feature an application-class processor from Arduino parent company Qualcomm and to act as a standalone single-board computer as well as a tethered development board with STMicroelectronics microcontroller. Using App Lab, it's possible to quickly create applications that run on the microprocessor side of the board while being able to communicate with the microcontroller side.

The new release brings one major quality-of-life improvement: the ability to more easily share your creations, thanks to a one-click import/export function that produces standard zip-format archives of a complete project. The update also includes a new integrated firmware flasher — though one which requires a whopping 10GB of space for temporary storage on the host computer — the ability to skip connecting the Arduino UNO Q to a Wi-Fi network and to skip update notifications, and expanded syntax highlighting with support for web languages including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The latest version of Arduino App Lab is now available on the Arduino website, though requires an Arduino UNO Q to be of any use.