A group of students at Penn Labs have joined forces with the Undergraduate Assembly (UA) to bring to the students of Penn something they’ve never had before—a University-wide app. PennMobile is a brand-new app that allows users to access course schedules, Penn Transit maps, and more, all from their mobile devices.

While many schools already have apps to access university information, PennMobile is different: The app was fully directed by students, from conception to development, and through the current launch. Nearby universities, including Temple, Drexel, and Princeton, have apps that were developed by contracted development shops with little to no student involvement.

Sacha Best, a sophomore computer science major in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, is the lead iOS developer for the app and the new co-director of Penn Labs, alongside Adel Qalieh, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. David Lakata and Qalieh wrote the Android version of the app, and Alex Wissman wrote the code to connect both the iOS and Android versions to a main server.

The app went live on Feb. 4 for both iOS and Android. Although the Android version is still operating in beta, the iOS version is in full production, and both are available for free download.

Students can use the app to search for course information and professors’ contact information, while the whole campus community can benefit from Penn Transit schedules, maps and menus for each of the dining halls, and built-in links to the Daily Pennsylvanian and other campus publications. Through the app, users can also contact Public Safety, call the student HELP line, or request a ride or walking escort. While this information was all previously available online, it was scattered on different websites.

“Our goal with this app,” Best says, “is to deliver relevant information to students that was previously hard to access on mobile phones.”

Funded by the UA and the Vice Provost for University Life, Penn Labs is a student-run and directed developer shop that intends to “bring the undergraduate student body together, digitally,” Best says.

Best and the rest of the developers are looking for feedback from people who are using the app.

“Go check it out,” he says. “We’d love to hear what people have to think.”

PennMobile can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store or Google Play.