Instant Apps Announcement – Minimalist Deprecation in the ArcGIS Online November 2022 Update

In the upcoming ArcGIS Online November 2022 update, the Minimalist template in ArcGIS Instant Apps will be deprecated.

The Minimalist template showcases a web map with minimal tools and options, to put emphasis on the map with a clean and modern user interface.

The latest iteration of Minimalist was first introduced in the ArcGIS Online March 2020 update as one of the Configurable Apps templates and was one of the first to be migrated to the next-generation templates in ArcGIS Instant Apps.

Recommended Replacement Template

We recommend the more recent Sidebar as the replacement template for Minimalist.

You can use the Sidebar template to create the same app as Minimalist to showcase a map with a side panel that includes a legend, item description, and pop-up information. Sidebar has a very similar configuration experience as Minimalist, plus more optional capabilities, such as editing, custom theme settings, and so on.

To learn more about Sidebar, start with the following blogs:

What’s new in Instant Apps: Introducing Sidebar

Instant Apps: Updates to the Sidebar template

What does the deprecation of an Instant Apps template mean?

• The template will be removed from the Create tab of the ArcGIS Instant Apps home page.
• If you have already configured an app using a template that is deprecated, the app will continue to work and be accessible to your users. The app configuration can still be edited.
• No new functionality will be added to the template in future releases.
• No reported issues or bugs will be fixed in the template.
• The item page for the template will indicate that the template is deprecated and will point you to the recommended replacement template.

What’s the expectation for Enterprise users?

Minimalist will also be deprecated in the ArcGIS Enterprise 11.1 release. Deprecated templates are removed from the Create tab on the Instant Apps home page. Existing apps created from deprecated templates will continue to work and you can still edit the app configuration. It is recommended that ArcGIS Enterprise users choose the Sidebar template when creating apps for the same purpose.

To learn more about ArcGIS Instant Apps, check out this introduction blog article. For inspiration, browse the gallery and explore example apps created with Instant Apps.

ArcGIS Instant Apps team is actively seeking feedback about the latest apps, as well as suggestions and ideas to build the next focused template for interacting with your maps and data.  Share yours in the Esri Community (formerly known as GeoNet) ArcGIS Instant Apps Question board and Ideas site.