Hello,
I’ve been using Livebook to create notebooks aimed at non-technical users, but I’ve run into a problem. The presence of code cells can be intimidating for some.
The typical workaround would be to deploy these notebooks as apps, which hides the code, but that requires setting up environment variables, which isn’t very accessible for users running Livebook Desktop.
For now, I’ve advised them to use the “Preview” app feature, but that approach isn’t very intuitive either.
Is there an alternative way Livebook Desktop could support auto-deploying apps or offer a more user-friendly method to launch them in app mode?
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One more option is for the users to change the notebook view to hide code cells:
Then it looks like this:
Note that changing the view is not persisted in the notebook, it’s temporary user preference, so they would need to always change the view explicitly. It also means they still need to run the cells to see results; if you want the results to show up upfront, then apps may indeed be a better fit.
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Livebook Teams?
If you add the environment variable to the team, they don’t need to keep track of them.
Auto-deploying should also be single click, assuming you’re following their guides and are in a supported setup for that.
Don’t quote me on it though.
Generally though I think this what LV Teams is specifically meant for 
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Livebook is a development environment by default, so it doesn’t have a way to auto-deploy apps without technical knowledge.
That said, we created the Livebook Apps feature for a use case like yours. Once you develop a Livebook app, you can deploy it, so its users don’t have to install Livebook, they can access your deployed app through their browser.
You can deploy apps in two ways:
- via a Docker container
- via Livebook Teams
Here’s a demo of deploying a Livebook app in both ways:
All that said, there’s one way Livebook can automatically boot apps saved in a specific dir, set by the env var LIVEBOOK_APPS_PATH. Still, it doesn’t look like this is a good option for your use case.
My suggestion would be Livebook apps deployed with Docker or with Livebook Teams.
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