Compatibility Between Different Releases of App Designer
R2026bIf you develop apps across multiple releases of MATLAB®, or if you edit or run a shared App Designer app in a different release than it was saved in, App Designer updates your app to provide compatibility between the releases. If you encounter errors, you can open the app in App Designer to help resolve them.
Edit and Run Apps in Later Releases
If you create an app in one MATLAB release and then update to a later release, you can continue to edit and run the app. App Designer updates the app code for the later release and displays a message such as this one.
Edit and Run Apps in Earlier Releases
If you have an existing app that was created in one MATLAB release and you are using an earlier MATLAB release, you can open the app in App Designer for editing.
App Designer removes any functionality that is not supported in the release you are using and provides an option to see the differences in the updated app. This removal might affect the app functionality. For example, if you load an app with a UI component in a release before the component was introduced, App Designer removes the component from the app.
If you try to run an app in an earlier release, you might encounter errors if the app uses functionality that is not supported in your release. To resolve the errors, open the app in App Designer and view the changes App Designer makes to the app.
Before R2026b: Apps stored in the plain text file format
do not open in App Designer in earlier MATLAB releases. If you try to open the app code file or app configuration
file, then it opens in the MATLAB Editor. You cannot run the app unless you switch to a supported
release or convert the app to the binary format (.mlapp).
Save Copy of App
To support compatibility, you can convert an existing app to a different file
format by creating a copy and selecting either MATLAB App
(*.m) or MATLAB App (*.mlapp) in the
file browser that appears when you save the copy.
App Designer provides two options to create copies of your app: Save Copy As and Save As. You can access both options from the Save button in the App Designer toolstrip. These options serve different purposes and behave differently.
To save a copy of your app to edit or share later, use Save Copy As. When you use this option, App Designer saves the copy of the app in the specified folder, but it does not replace the app in your current session.
To save a copy of your app and continue editing it, use Save As. When you use this option, App Designer saves the copy of the app in the specified folder and replaces the app in your current session.
If you save a copy of your app in a different file format, rename your app or save it in a different folder. Otherwise, MATLAB might run an unintended version of the app.
