Russell Keith-Magee gave a great tutorial (and talk) at PyCon US 2024, working through using BeeWare tools (Briefcase and Toga) to build a simple Python app and packaging and running it natively (from a single codebase!) for multiple target platforms, including desktop and mobile.
Briefcase handles the packaging for the target platform (i.e. it can produce a macOS dmg installer and an Android aab/apk), and Toga is an OS-native GUI toolkit that uses native UI components for the target platform so the app feels and looks natural. This means Toga isn’t a great choice when pixel-perfect control is necessary (i.e. graphical games), but it’s perfect for lots of other things (i.e. business-logic-centric use cases).
I watched the recording and followed along the tutorial: https://github.com/itamaro/beeware-tutorial-toga
Here’s a screenshot of the installed app running natively on my ARM-based MacBook (including the menu bar, demonstrating native behaviors for macOS):
My tutorial terminal log:
python3 -m venv beewarenv
source beewarenv/bin/activate
python -m pip install briefcase
briefcase --version
briefcase new
cd helloworld
briefcase dev -vv
## macOS app
briefcase create
briefcase build
briefcase run
briefcase package --adhoc-sign
## update or run and update
briefcase update
briefcase run -u
briefcase update --update-resources
## android
briefcase create android
briefcase build android
briefcase run android --update-resources
briefcase package android --adhoc-sign
## web
briefcase create web
briefcase build web
briefcase run web -u
## test
briefcase dev --test -r
briefcase run Android --test -r