How to add Supabase to your iOS app

What Supabase does for an iOS app

Most apps need somewhere to store user data and a way to sign people in. Supabase gives you both without standing up your own server. The database is plain Postgres, so you get real tables, relations, and SQL. Auth handles email, magic links, and Sign in with Apple. Storage holds files like avatars. The safety model rests on Row Level Security: you write policies in Postgres that decide which rows each user can touch, which is what makes a public anon key safe to ship.

Adding Supabase with AppFlight

In AppFlight you open the integrations panel, choose Supabase, and paste your project URL and anon key. AppFlight stores the anon key as a client value, safe to ship in the binary, and keeps your service role key server-side so it never lands in the app. Because AppFlight uses your own Supabase project, backend secrets for other connectors can live there too. From there you can ask the AI to add a sign-in screen or a synced list, and it generates the SwiftUI and the matching queries.

A SwiftUI example

Create the client once, then query a table from an async context:

import Supabase
import SwiftUI

let supabase = SupabaseClient(
    supabaseURL: URL(string: "https://yourproject.supabase.co")!,
    supabaseKey: "your-anon-key"
)

struct Note: Codable, Identifiable {
    let id: Int
    let title: String
}

struct NotesView: View {
    @State private var notes: [Note] = []

    var body: some View {
        List(notes) { note in Text(note.title) }
            .task {
                notes = (try? await supabase
                    .from("notes")
                    .select()
                    .execute()
                    .value) ?? []
            }
    }
}

Alternatives

Firebase is the closest comparison and is strong for realtime sync and a mature analytics suite, but it stores data in a NoSQL document model rather than SQL. CloudKit is free within Apple's ecosystem and integrates tightly with iCloud, though it is Apple-only and harder to query. Supabase is the pick when you want real Postgres, an open-source stack you can self-host, and a single project that can also hold the backend secrets for your other integrations.