App
An App in Salesforce is a named bundle of navigation items, branding, utilities, and user assignments that decides what one group of people sees when they log in.
Definition
An App in Salesforce is a named bundle of navigation items, branding, utilities, and user assignments that decides what one group of people sees when they log in. Sales reps open the Sales app and get Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities across the top. Service agents open the Service Console and get Cases, Knowledge, and an Omni-Channel utility in the footer. One org can hold dozens of these, each scoped to a role or a workflow.
The word does a lot of work here, though. A Lightning App is the UI container described above, stored as CustomApplication metadata with a uiType of Lightning. A Connected App is something else entirely, an OAuth registration that lets an outside system authenticate against your org. An AppExchange app is a managed package you install. The mobile app is the phone client. Same word, four different surfaces.
That ambiguity got sharper in Spring '26, when Salesforce switched off creation of new Connected Apps through Setup and the API. External Client Apps are the replacement on that side of the word. The Lightning App, the one every user sits inside all day, is untouched by any of it.
In plain English
“Think of a workbench set up for one job. The tools you need are laid out in front of you and the rest are put away. Salesforce lets a company build a different bench for each team, and you get handed the right one when you sign in.”
Worked example
Harborline Medical Supply runs renewals out of a dedicated Lightning app. In App Manager they create Renewals Desk, set the primary color to #0B5CAB, and pick console navigation so a rep can hold six accounts open at once. The navigation bar carries Home, Accounts, Contracts, Opportunities, and a Renewals Due list view. The utility bar gets History and Notes, nothing else. Rather than editing profiles, they grant visibility through a permission set called Renewals_Desk_Access. Renewals Desk is then set as the default app on the Renewals Specialist profile, so those 14 reps land there on login. Everyone else in the org never sees the tile in their App Launcher.
From App Manager to App Launcher
App Manager and the New Lightning App wizard
Lightning Apps live in Setup. Type App into the Quick Find box, open App Manager, and click New Lightning App. The wizard walks four decisions: name and developer name, branding, navigation items, and the utility items that sit in the footer. A final screen assigns the app to profiles. Everything the wizard writes lands in a CustomApplication metadata record, which is why apps deploy through change sets and source control like any other component. App Manager also lists Salesforce Classic apps beside Lightning ones, so check the App Type column before you edit an existing row.
Standard navigation versus console navigation
The navType field on CustomApplication takes two values. Standard opens one record at a time, replacing whatever you were looking at. Console opens records as primary workspace tabs with related records stacked underneath as subtabs, so an agent can keep six cases and their parent accounts on screen at once. Console also turns on navigation rules, which decide whether a clicked record opens as a workspace tab or a subtab. The setting lives on the App Options page and can be edited on an existing app. Treat that as a real change rather than a toggle. Flipping a live app to console navigation rearranges every user's screen the next time they load it.
The utility bar belongs to one App
The utility bar is the fixed footer that opens docked panels without losing your place. Omni-Channel for service agents, an Open CTI softphone for callers, History, Notes, Macros. It is a Lightning page in its own right, referenced from CustomApplication by developer name. A utility bar built in the wizard or in Lightning App Builder binds to a single app, while one created through the API can be attached to several. Salesforce suggests staying under ten utilities, which is already generous. Visualforce pages are not supported there and the Chatter publisher only partly works, so plan on Lightning components.
Who gets to see which App
Visibility comes from Assigned Apps, a section that appears on both profiles and permission sets. Each app gets a Visible checkbox, and profiles also carry a Default flag that decides where a user lands on login. Permission sets are the better lever in most orgs. You can grant one team a second app without cloning a profile that forty other people share. The formFactors field adds a second filter: Large makes an app available on Lightning Experience desktop and Small makes it available on phones. An app with no Small form factor simply does not appear on mobile.
The App Launcher is the switchboard
Users move between apps through the App Launcher, the grid icon on the left of the navigation bar. It shows a tile for every app the running user has visibility on. The search box at the top matches apps and individual items. A rep can type Contracts and land on the tab without knowing which app it belongs to. Connected and third-party apps appear here too once they have been set up for it. When a user insists an app does not exist, that search box is the fastest way to prove otherwise.
Connected Apps, and what changed in Spring '26
A Connected App has nothing to do with the navigation bar. It is an OAuth client registration: a consumer key, a secret, a callback URL, a set of scopes, and policies covering IP ranges and refresh tokens. Every integration that authenticates into your org sits on one. From Spring '26, orgs can no longer stand up new ones through Setup or the Metadata API unless they request that ability from Salesforce Support. Existing registrations keep running, and editing, installing, and deleting them all still work. Fresh ones now arrive only through package installation. Salesforce has said end-of-support timelines for the old framework will be announced separately.
External Client Apps, the successor framework
External Client Apps are what you build instead. They cover the same OAuth and SAML ground, but split configuration in two. Developers set defaults and hold sensitive values on the Settings tab. Admins tighten the screws on the Policies tab. They are local and secure by default rather than globally available, they were designed for second-generation managed packaging, and they behave properly through the Metadata API. Salesforce recommends them in all situations and ships a migration tool for existing local Connected Apps. Three capabilities still exist only on the older framework: user provisioning, the OAuth username-password flow, and dynamic client registration.
AppExchange packages, mobile, and Classic holdovers
An AppExchange app is a managed package installed into your org, arriving with its own namespace, objects, fields, and Apex classes. Plenty of packages ship a Lightning App of their own, which is where the vocabulary collision bites new admins: installing an app can add an app. The Salesforce mobile client renders a subset of your Lightning Apps on phones, filtered by form factor. CustomApplication also still supports a uiType of Aloha for Salesforce Classic apps. Classic has not been switched off, but new capability lands in Lightning Experience only. An Aloha row in App Manager is a migration item rather than a design choice.
Designing an App people will actually use
Curation beats coverage. Ten navigation items matched to a team's real day beat thirty covering every object anyone might touch. App Launcher search already handles the long tail. Trailhead's own advice is to ask the team what they open most and tier the menu around the answer. Reserve the utility bar for actions people take dozens of times a shift, not once a quarter. Then set the default app per profile so nobody starts the morning with a click they did not need. Those three decisions account for most of the usability gap between two otherwise identical orgs.
Build a Lightning App in App Manager
Settle the navigation style before you start, because changing it later reshapes the screen for everyone already in the app. The rest of the wizard is cheap to revise.
- Open App Manager
From Setup, type App in the Quick Find box and select App Manager. Click New Lightning App. The list mixes Lightning and Classic rows, so read the App Type column before you touch anything existing.
- Name and brand it
Give the app a label, let the developer name generate, and write a description your future self will thank you for. Upload a logo and set a primary color so users can tell at a glance which app they are in.
- Pick the navigation style
On App Options, select Standard or Console. Picking Console adds a Navigation Rules page to the wizard. Work through that page object by object. The defaults ignore how your team pairs records, so a contact that should open under its account will not.
- Add navigation and utility items
Move the tabs the team needs into the selected list. The top item becomes the landing page, so order it deliberately. Then add utility items: Omni-Channel, History, and Notes cover most cases, and stopping well short of ten is wise.
- Assign it, then test it
Add the profiles that should see the app, or skip that and grant visibility through a permission set afterwards. Save, then open the App Launcher as a test user and confirm the tile is there.
Standard or Console, stored as navType. Editable later on App Options, though switching a live app changes how every record opens for its users.
The docked footer panels. Bound to one app by default, and limited to Lightning components, since Visualforce is not supported here.
Present on both profiles and permission sets. Only the profile version carries the Default flag that sets a user's landing app.
- An app that is Visible but not Default still makes users switch to it by hand every session.
- Form factor is easy to miss. An app without the Small form factor never shows up in the Salesforce mobile app, no matter who it is assigned to.
- A utility bar built in the wizard binds to that one app. A second app with the same footer means building it twice, unless you create the bar through the API.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to App in Salesforce, step by step
How organizations use App
Claims handlers, underwriters, and the renewals desk each get their own console app. Same objects underneath, three different navigation bars, so nobody scrolls past tabs that belong to another team.
Field service technicians get a phone-first app carrying the Small form factor and four navigation items. The desktop app for the same people carries eighteen.
Grants staff and programs staff share one org and almost no objects. Two Lightning apps granted through permission sets keep the App Launcher honest and the onboarding deck short.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- New Connected Apps Can No Longer Be Created in Spring '26 (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- External Client Apps and Connected Apps (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Comparison of Connected Apps and External Client Apps Features (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- How Are Console Apps Different from Standard Apps? (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Create and Edit a Custom Lightning Console App (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on App.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on App.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
+5 pts / dayQ1. Which value of the navType field on CustomApplication gives an app multi-tab workspaces with subtabs?
Q2. From which release can orgs no longer create new Connected Apps through the UI or the Metadata API without requesting the ability from Salesforce Support?
Q3. An admin assigns a new Lightning app to a profile and marks it Visible, but users still land in the Sales app every morning. What is missing?
Q4. A field service team says a newly assigned app is missing from their phones. What should you check first?
Q5. Which capability is still available through connected apps but not through external client apps?
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