September 17, 2026

Imaginode is on Google Play: the AI creative canvas is now an Android app

Imaginode's Android app is live on the Play Store. The same node canvas as on desktop, the same 98 image, video, text and voice models, in an app that opens full screen from your home screen. What changes, what doesn't, and why the app sells nothing.

Frank HoubreFounder of Imaginode

an icon on the home screen, at last

Imaginode now installs from Google Play like any other Android app: one icon, full screen, and the canvas opens straight onto your projects.

Imaginode has an Android app. It is listed as Imaginode on the Play Store, it is free, and you can install it here. It has existed since August 20, 2026 as an internal test; Google approved the public release in mid-September, the listing is live, and all that was missing was this article to say so.

It wasn't an obvious move. The site already worked very well in Chrome on a phone, and I said so at length in the article about creating with AI on mobile. But there is a gap between "it works in the browser" and "it's on my phone". An icon on the home screen gets opened. A tab lost among forty others gets forgotten.

The app fixes exactly that. You tap the green flame, the dashboard fills the screen, no address bar, no tabs, and you're inside your latest project in two seconds. Everything else, the canvas, the models, the credits, is Imaginode as you already know it.

what's inside: everything

The app gives you the full canvas, all 98 models in the catalog, @mention references and unlimited projects, with nothing removed compared to desktop.

I'd rather say it plainly, because many mobile AI generation apps are cut-down versions of their website: here, nothing was taken out. The node canvas is the same. You wire a Text node into an Image node, an Image node into a Video node, you add a Camera node to direct the motion, and every link stays editable afterwards.

The catalog is the same too: 98 models as of September 17, 2026, image, video, text and voice, at the same credit prices as on desktop. Flux Schnell at 1 credit to sketch, Nano Banana Pro and GPT Image for text inside the image, Kling, Veo and Seedance for video, ElevenLabs for voice-over. If one model botches your typography, you rerun the same node with another one, without rebuilding anything.

@mention references, the creations library, ready-made templates, the generation history on every node, the magic wand that rewrites a prompt typed with your thumb: it's all there. And the cost shows on the Generate button before you tap, as it does everywhere else.

generation keeps going once you pocket the phone

All generation happens on Imaginode's servers: you launch a video, lock the screen, and the result is waiting the next time you open the app.

This is the feature I've been pushing on mobile from day one, and the app changes nothing about the principle: your phone computes nothing. It sends an instruction, the server does the work, the phone receives a result. It doesn't heat up, its battery doesn't melt, and an entry-level Android gets exactly the same image as a gaming tower.

In practice, you launch a ten-second Seedance video on the tram, lock the screen, answer a message. Three minutes later you reopen the app: the generation tracker icon at the top of the screen shows the job finished. No app that computes on the device can do this, because it needs to stay in the foreground.

And the project is the same one as on your computer, served by the same server. You start a poster in the app, you finish it with a mouse at the office, no export, no sync. There is no Save button: every change is saved the instant it happens.

what the app doesn't do: sell

The app is for creating. Subscriptions and credit top-ups are bought on imaginode.ai in the browser, and that's a deliberate choice to avoid paying Google's commission.

Here's the part that will surprise you on first launch, so let me explain it right away. Inside the app there is no Pricing page, no top-up button, no subscription management. If you try to buy credits, the app sends you to the website. That's not an oversight, it's a decision made in August 2026.

Google Play takes a commission on every digital purchase made inside an app, between 15 and 30 percent depending on revenue. An Imaginode credit costs about one cent, and that price is the same whether you generate an image or a 4K video: there's no hidden margin to absorb thirty percent. I would have had to either raise prices in the app or run two price lists depending on where you buy. Both options struck me as dishonest.

So I took the simplest option: the app sells nothing. You subscribe and top up on the pricing page, in Chrome, at the listed price, and your credits are available in the app within a second because it's the same account. You lose thirty seconds once a month, you keep the fair price all the time. That trade-off works for me, and I think it will work for you.

how it's built, in two honest sentences

The app displays imaginode.ai full screen through Chrome's engine, what Google calls a Trusted Web Activity: no parallel version to maintain, and every new feature lands in the app the same day.

I'm not going to sell you a "native" app that isn't one. Technically, Imaginode's Android app is a Trusted Web Activity: Android checks that the app and the site belong to the same owner, then displays the site with Chrome's engine, full screen, without any browser bar. It's the method Google recommends for complete web applications, and large services use it.

The upside for you is huge, and it fits in one line: there is only one Imaginode. When a model joins the catalog or a feature ships, it's in the app at the next launch, with no update to download and no store review to wait for. On a tool that changes every week, a separately maintained Android version would always have been two weeks behind.

The downside exists too: the app needs an up-to-date Chrome on your phone. That's true of nearly every Android out there, but if you've disabled Chrome in favor of another browser, the app will open in a fallback window with an address bar. Nothing breaks, it's just less pretty.

Installation goes through the Play Store, sign-in uses your usual Imaginode account, and the first launch lands on the dashboard with your projects already there.

Open the Google Play listing and tap Install. The app weighs a few megabytes, because it contains no models: they run on our servers, not in your pocket. On a phone already full of photos, that's a very concrete argument.

On first launch, sign in with your Imaginode account, the one from the site. If you don't have one yet, signing up gives you welcome credits, enough for your first images. You land on the dashboard, your projects are there, you open the latest one and carry on.

One detail that matters on a small screen: the app starts directly on the dashboard, not on the site's home page. No presentation to scroll through, no menu to open. You launch, you create.

three things that work better in the app

Photographing a sketch to turn it into a finished image, launching a batch on the commute, showing a client a render full screen: three uses where the app beats the browser tab.

The first is the camera. The Media node imports from the gallery, and a phone always has a fresh gallery. You photograph a sketch in a notebook, plug it into an Image node with Flux Kontext at 6 credits, ask for "finished poster, same proportions, midnight blue palette", and the sketch becomes a visual. To change a photo's background or change a haircut, it's the same gesture, from a photo taken ten seconds earlier.

The second is batch work on the commute. You stack six sketches at 1 credit each, a five-second video, a voice-over, and you put the phone away. At the next stop, everything is ready to compare. The browser tab already did this, but you had to find it again; the icon is always in the same place.

The third is presenting. In a meeting, you hand over the phone, the full-screen viewer scrolls through the renders, the video plays, and there's no address bar reminding anyone it's a website. The client asks for a variant, you launch it in front of them. To make a photo talk as a demo, the effect is guaranteed.

and on iPhone?

There is no iOS app for now: on iPhone, Imaginode installs from Safari with Share then Add to Home Screen, and runs full screen the same way.

No App Store app today, and I won't promise you a date. Apple enforces its own rules on digital purchases, even stricter than Google's, and I want to study them before committing.

In the meantime, the browser method works fully on iPhone: open imaginode.ai in Safari, tap Share, then "Add to Home Screen". You get an icon and full screen, generation continues with the screen locked, and your credits are the same. The only difference from Android is that there's no store listing.

On desktop, Chrome and Edge also offer to install Imaginode in one click from the address bar. The website remains the main entrance, and the Android app is one more door, not a replacement.

your data, plainly

The app shares no data with third parties, traffic is encrypted, and your prompts and media only leave our servers to be executed by the model you picked.

The Google Play listing states it in black and white, and I'll repeat it here: no data is shared with third parties. The app collects what the site collects, your account, the images and videos you import to process them, and nothing more. Traffic with our servers is encrypted, and you can request deletion of your data from your profile.

Your imported media is used for the generation you asked for, then stored in your library, which is yours. As on the site, your prompts and reference images are sent to the provider of the model you chose to execute your request, and to nothing else: our legal notice spells it out, and it's identical in the app and in the browser.

Google rates the app PEGI 3, which simply means it contains no app-specific content subject to an age restriction. What you generate with it is up to you, under the same usage rules as on the site.

what I'm asking of you

Install the app, open a project, and tell me what's missing: feedback from the first weeks decides what gets fixed first.

The app is out of internal testing, but it's young. If a gesture feels less natural than in the browser, if a link opens in the wrong place, if a page stays blank, write to imaginode.ai@gmail.com with your phone model. A precise report often gets fixed the same day, since the app is the site.

And if you like the app, a rating on the Play Store helps more than you'd think: it's what Google looks at to decide whether to show a new app to people searching for "AI image generator". Five honest stars are worth more than a compliment by message.

To go further on mobile use itself, the touch canvas gestures and how to split a day between phone and desk, the mobile article remains the reference. And to know what your commute generations will cost, the cost guide gives the numbers, model by model.