Our new release ProtoPie 7.6 brings in an exciting feature: QR code scanner.

 feature and unlock a wealth of smart interactions. For example, you can scan a QR code to open a webpage or trigger a wide range of other actions in your prototype.

With the new QR code scanner, you can unleash your creativity and make your ProtoPie prototypes even more expressive and realistic!

The QR code scanner feature is available to all ProtoPie users, regardless of their plan.

You can create your own QR codes for free on 

How to Enable the QR Code Scanner in ProtoPie

Activate the QR code scanner option in either:

You can overlay an image on your QR code by placing it on top of the Camera layer.

The QR code scanner has two capabilities:

Let's examine in detail what each option enables.

The "Open URL Immediately" option in ProtoPie allows you to scan a QR code and open a link directly in a web browser.

Use this feature creatively to prototype popular mobile interactions, such as scanning a QR code to open a video or initiate a payment transaction.

The "Keep Tracking" option enables you to monitor values stored in your QR code.

ProtoPie lets you store QR code values in 

Here is a list of the QR code predefined variables that we currently support:

Storing QR code values in predefined variables opens up many interaction design possibilities! For example, you can store a QR value and display the information it contains in another scene. Or you can animate layers based on the QR code’s position and size, as in this prototype example here below.

In this prototype, the overlay icon scales and moves based on the X/Y coordinates and width/height of the QR code. To see how this effect was created using the new QR code predefined variables, download the prototype 

Unleash your creative potential with ProtoPie

ProtoPie is a high-fidelity prototyping tool that integrates seamlessly with your designer workflow. Transform your interaction design ideas into high-fidelity prototypes for any digital product imaginable!

Make your prototypes even more expressive by adding QR code-enabled interactions. This is now possible in ProtoPie 7.6, thanks to the new QR Code Scanner. 

What’s New? QR Code Scanner  

 is a crucial aspect of product design that helps ensure that a product is user-friendly and meets the needs of its target audience. By observing how users interact with a product, designers can identify pain points and areas for improvement, leading to greater customer satisfaction and loyalty. User testing can provide valuable feedback that can be used to refine a product before implementation, ultimately saving time and resources in the product development cycle.

The new User Testing features empower designers & product managers to do moderated user testing (remotely and in-person) with prototypes made with ProtoPie, all within ProtoPie’s own secure ecosystem.

To start, create a test room and invite your participants. Then observe how test participants—your end users—interact with your high-fidelity prototypes in real-time, and collect valuable, meaningful feedback to lead future product development decisions.

These features are currently in closed beta, available to select ProtoPie Enterprise customers. 

You can invite users to test your prototype on their phone, tablet, or desktop. There are two ways for participants to join the test room:

By opening a link in their desktop browser.

Whether using a link or scanning a QR code, participants need to input an interim code to access the test room. This ensures that only the intended participants can access the testing environment and, consequently, the prototype.

During user testing, moderators must ensure that the feedback they receive from participants is accurate and reflects their actual experiences with the product. This can be difficult, as participants may not always be forthcoming with their opinions or may be influenced by the testing environment itself.

Within ProtoPie's secure environment, moderators can conduct live user testing sessions to observe how participants interact with the product in real time. This allows them to not only identify pain points or areas for improvement, but also receive and give feedback immediately.

Aside from the new User Testing features, you can still use prototypes created with ProtoPie with user testing tools such as 

 has seamless integration with ProtoPie. Check out 

 to see our top 5 usability testing tools in 2023.

Get started with ProtoPie Enterprise today

User testing is an essential part of product design & the product development cycle. ProtoPie's new User Testing features provide a secure, easy-to-use environment for testing prototypes with real users.

These features are currently in closed beta and are only available to select ProtoPie Enterprise customers. If your organization or company is interested, please 

Discover how to get even more value out of your prototypes in ProtoPie with the User Testing features. Now in closed beta for ProtoPie Enterprise customers.

What’s New? ProtoPie User Testing

High-fidelity prototyping is an echo without a starting shot: businesses can listen to feedback before the product is even finished, let alone rolled out to consumers.

This is why hi-fi prototyping is now the bread and butter of UX/UI designers, allowing for the creation of prototypes that 

Of course, prototyping is changing in response to a changing market. Business moves faster, but the need to outshine your competitors remains as critical as ever.

There’s a problem. Low-fidelity prototyping tools like 

 boast quick turnaround times but lack richness, depth, and complexity. Many high-fidelity prototyping tools are rich in interactions and animations but are notoriously slow and sluggish. Prototyping tools must have rapid turnaround times and high-fidelity power to meet market demands.

Developers have a few good options. Two of the most popular are ProtoPie and Axure.

 is a multi-platform rapid high-fidelity prototyping tool that enables developers to create interactive wireframes quickly and intuitively — in short, rich and realistic prototypes that 

ProtoPie is armed to the teeth with a wide range of powerful, mind-bending features that allow users to seamlessly create realistic interactions and micro-interactions within rich and dynamic prototypes. The best thing of all? It’s 

Music Player Prototype by Kay van den Aker.

 used to be the gold standard of hi-fi prototyping tools. This is unsurprising, considering the sheer power of its features and the ability it gives users to create beautiful prototypes complete with rich animations and complex interactions.

The ultimate test of any high-fidelity prototyping tool is whether it does what it says on the tin — create rich and complex prototypes. Axure lets you create elaborate prototypes and enables complex interactions. Best of all, it comes with powerful features, including reusable 

Product design is a team effort, and Axure unleashes the power of creative collaboration. It boasts an SVN-like check-in/check-out feature that makes working with others on a single project easy.

Let’s say you want to share your prototype with the engineering team. Axure lets users save their wireframes to 

 and convert the notes to annotations. This doesn’t just speed up the handover process but simplifies the transposition from creative design to code.

Lastly, there's a wealth of online training available for Axure. It's not an easy program to learn, so taking advantage of the online community and training videos is essential.

There’s little point in prototyping software that runs on a single platform, and Axure puts accessibility at the heart of what they do. For one, Axure runs seamlessly on Windows and Mac.

Axure also allows for the creation of interactive 

 mock-ups for both websites and mobile applications, giving designers multiple perspectives on the same prototype.

Axure isn’t the gold standard anymore — and for good reason. It is recommended that only expert UX designers (with a big budget to burn) use Axure — it comes packaged with a steep price tag and an even steeper learning curve.

For one, it’s difficult to get your head around quickly and intuitively. This is arguably counterbalanced by the mass of educational videos available online. Expect to spend some long, exhausting hours before you’ve breathed some life into a new idea.

Axure lacks certain features that ProtoPie has. For instance, the ability to create 

 for mobile devices and the use of sensors to control prototypes.

This limited range of features may make it unsuitable for designers who want to create realistic prototypes with rich animations and complex interactions — prototypes that 

Why ProtoPie is the best rapid high-fidelity prototyping tool

ProtoPie is the prototyping equivalent of flying to the moon without years of training. Create rapid high-fidelity prototypes for multiple devices complete with rich animations and complex interactions in a few clicks and drags — entirely 

Best of all, unlike Axure, ProtoPie’s free version has 

ProtoPie’s clean and simple interface simplifies complex and powerful features from the get-go. Users can create interactions by combining objects, triggers, and responses in just a few clicks. No need for wireframing. No need for naive, stick-men mockups. In short, create high-fidelity prototypes quickly and at ease.

 designed to help you build your prototyping expertise.

What’s the point of prototyping mobile apps if you can’t deploy them instantly on mobile devices? Unlike Axure, ProtoPie enables users to deploy their prototypes on iOS, iPadOS, and Android devices easily with the free companion app 

ProtoPie is all about smooth connectivity. This is best seen by its remarkable capacity for the deployment of prototypes — from chat platforms to payment apps — across multiple devices. They can talk to each other as if the prototype were 

Seamlessly integrate hardware and software

Prototype any real-world scenarios involving multiple devices, displays, hardware, and APIs seamlessly. Let’s take automotive as an example. With ProtoPie’s 

, design teams at Lucid Motors and BMW bring their concept into real cars within minutes. 

 how Icon Incar uses ProtoPie to take automotive rapid prototyping to the next level.

Plus, ProtoPie enables users to easily control the sensors of smart devices in their prototypes: tilt, sound, compass, proximity sensor, vibration motor, 3D touch sensors — you name it.

Create true dynamic interactions with formulas and variables

ProtoPie is armed with a load of cool, intelligent features, including conditions and 

 primed for logic-empowered prototypes. Check out the Ask ProtoPie video below and learn how to add logic to your interactions to create hyper-realistic digital prototypes.

Share ideas and get help from the community

ProtoPie is perfect for collaboration. The 

 is a rich and diverse network of creatives and technicians — the ideal place for a beginner to hone their craft, and for experts to impart their knowledge. All in all, a great place for UX designers to share their ideas.

Easily share and manage prototypes via the cloud

Sharing your prototype is incredibly easy via the 

. Customize and share links for your prototypes and let your stakeholders experience your prototypes on their own devices.

The hand-off process is sped up tenfold by ProtoPie’s 

 feature. For each interaction, a recording includes all the information an engineer needs to turn your interactions into actual production: duration, delay, easing, as well as layer properties, all accessible in a single overview. Read more about 

How To Upgrade Your Designer-Developer Collaboration

Axure and ProtoPie are both code-free high-fidelity prototyping tools, perfect for design teams to de-risk every moonshot and breathe new life into their ideas.

They are collaborative and accessible and come armed with the sort of creative power that overshadows the stickmen mockups of Figma. Plus, their online communities and educational resources will never leave you wanting.

Here’s the difference. ProtoPie boasts an intuitive learning curve, while Axure comes packaged with complexity and a hefty price tag. Moreover, ProtoPie has more impressive features.

Ready to take your prototyping to the next level? 

Why ProtoPie remains the best rapid high-fidelity prototyping tool on the market.

ProtoPie vs. Axure : Which Is Best for Prototyping?

 7.5 with many new features & improvements to better your prototyping experience. We wanted to involve our ProtoPie users more actively in our development process, so we introduced ProtoPie Labs (or Labs for short). This feature allows you to test our latest beta features before their official release date.

With this ProtoPie update, users can try out the following beta features:

Turn your instance into a container by detaching

Users have long requested the ability to 

. We are pleased that ProtoPie 7.5 now makes this possible.

Detaching breaks the connection with the component and turns the instance into a container. You can do this either from the property panel or the context menu. Ensure that you have enabled the feature in Labs prior to use.

Once the instance has been detached, the Detached_ prefix will be automatically added to the detached interaction’s name. Easily identify whether an interaction stems from a detached instance or not.

Bring structure to your canvas with rulers & guides

It can be difficult to align objects, shapes or text layers on the canvas. This is where 

 come in handy. These visual tools are now here to help you quickly and precisely align objects, measure distances, and prototype faster.

Rulers appear at the top and left sides of your canvas area in ProtoPie Studio. First, make sure to enable rulers & guides in Labs. To show/hide rulers, use Shift + R, or access this under View in the application menu.

To create a vertical or horizontal guide, hover the mouse over the ruler area, then simply drag and drop the resize cursor.

Removing guides is simple. You can do this in three ways.

Quickly identify the variable scope in the formula input field

Enabling the improved formula input field allows you to distinguish whether a variable used inside a formula can be used in the current scene only or can be used in all scenes.

Being able to see right away what scope a variable has is convenient, especially if you are one of our advanced users that likes to use tons of 

 in their high-fidelity prototypes. Also, it’s useful when you dissect a Pie created by someone else.

At ProtoPie, we rely on the feedback from all of you to make sure our product is improving and meeting your needs. Your feedback helps us to understand what we're doing well and what we can do better.

To share your feedback on beta features, contact us directly from within ProtoPie Studio. Or join any of the 

ProtoPie is the high-fidelity prototyping tool that fits perfectly into your designer workflow. Turn interaction design ideas into high-fidelity prototypes for any digital product you can think of.

Meet ProtoPie Labs, where you can test our latest beta features. Detach component instances, rulers & guides, and more are now all available.

What’s New in ProtoPie? Discover ProtoPie Labs

Ensuring the security of our Enterprise customer’s data is one of our top priorities.

We know organizations can’t afford risking that the prototypes they share through 

 might get into the wrong hands and cause data leaks.

For this reason, we have introduced expiring links on ProtoPie Cloud. Enterprise teams can now configure how many days a prototype’s link should remain accessible after it is generated. 

This feature is only available in the Enterprise plan.

To set a link expiration on ProtoPie Cloud, follow these steps:

 in the upper-right area of the pie page.

Click on the section below the space owner’s name.

The default expiration timespan is Never.

The timespan is exact as it also considers the time the expiration was set. 

The default access level is No access. Other options are:

Subscribe now and discover endless possibilities with ProtoPie. 

Set an expiration timespan for prototypes shared through your Enterprise Cloud Space. Share Pie links securely with external stakeholders.

What’s New in ProtoPie? Prototypes' Expiring Links 

 on May 30, 2022 marked a major turning point in 

. Everyone could finally get started with ProtoPie and explore its power without any time restrictions, thanks to the new Free plan.

To support this feature milestone, we had to make adjustments to the way users create and save Pie files in 

. Users on a paid plan could choose between saving locally or saving to the cloud. Free 

 users would only be able to save their work on the cloud.

But as many of you in the community pointed out, this necessary separation between Local and Cloud files created one frustrating problem — It was no longer possible to overwrite a prototype on the cloud after opening a locally saved version. When uploaded to the cloud, Local Pies would automatically create a new URL, whether previous versions existed on 

We took your feedback seriously and started working on a better solution. ProtoPie 7.2 brings greater clarity and usability improvements to the whole flow.

Quickly identify where a prototype is saved.

Easily switch between Local and Cloud Pies.

Overwrite your cloud prototypes at any time to avoid unwanted pie URL duplicates.

Overwrite a Cloud Pie from any file in ProtoPie Studio

In versions 7.0 and 7.1, a locally saved Pie file would always generate a new URL when uploaded to the cloud. The only way to overwrite existing cloud versions was to open prototypes directly from ProtoPie Cloud in ProtoPie Studio’s dashboard.

But what if you were saving both locally and on the cloud?

For example, we know some of you prefer to save Pies locally and only upload to the cloud when you need to share the prototype with stakeholders.

In that case, the previous upload flow would result in annoying pie URL duplicates on ProtoPie Cloud. If you’d already shared the prototype’s URL with someone, you’d have to send them the newly generated URL, creating a lot of confusion and unnecessary friction.

ProtoPie 7.2 marks the end of this problem by allowing you to overwrite a prototype on the cloud from both locally saved Pies and other Cloud Pies.

If you open and edit a Local Pie and then upload it to the cloud, you can now decide whether you want to create a new Pie URL or overwrite an existing Cloud Pie. All you need to do is:

Select the prototype you want to overwrite in the Save to ProtoPie Cloud menu.

To overwrite a Pie URL from another Cloud Pie in ProtoPie Studio:

Select the prototype you want to overwrite.

You can now find all the Cloud Pies and Local Pies you recently edited in one single space. Open any recent prototype from the 

 list in ProtoPie Studio’s dashboard and just start editing it.

You can also remove items or delete the prototype from your computer or from ProtoPie Cloud, depending on where it’s saved.

No more wondering if the prototype you opened is a Cloud Pie or a Local Pie. In ProtoPie 7.2, you can always check where a prototype is stored.

Starting from the dashboard, each prototype card clearly indicates where the file was saved. The information is also available inside each tab after opening a prototype in ProtoPie Studio.

Before 7.2, it wasn’t possible to correctly import bitmap masks into ProtoPie Studio. This type of masking would break after you imported it from a design tool.

Starting from today, you can seamlessly import bitmap masks and edit them in ProtoPie Studio. If you often add this type of masking when you design icons, using them in ProtoPie just became a whole lot easier.

Subscribe now and discover endless possibilities with ProtoPie.

Overwrite your cloud prototypes at any time to avoid unwanted pie URL duplicates, easily switch between Local and Cloud Pies, quickly identify where a prototype is saved, and seamlessly import any bitmap masks — starting from ProtoPie Studio 7.2.

What’s New in ProtoPie? Overwriting Cloud Pies from Local Pies and Bitmap Mask Support

 is a good tool for creating simple interactions and animations, but it falls short when confronted with more complex demands.

Clunky and limited in features, Flinto makes it difficult to share your work with others. Moreover, Flinto lacks top-quality learning resources and a close-knit community of users.

 is primed for high-fidelity prototyping and is armed with cutting-edge features like voice interaction prototyping, boasting rich interactions, and a proactive community of UX designers.

Our modern, data-driven economy moves fast and UX designers are under increasing strain to impress stakeholders with high-fidelity designs created in the shortest time possible. In other words, they need a high-fidelity rapid prototyping tool.

There are essentially two prototyping tools that can suit their needs—ProtoPie and Flinto. This brings us to an important question in the ProtoPie vs Flinto debate—which is the best prototyping tool?

ProtoPie is a rapid prototyping tool for turning complex UI/UX design ideas into highly interactive, high-fidelity prototypes and runs on macOS and Windows.

We’re not blowing our own trumpet. According to one customer, “ProtoPie is a flexible yet powerful prototyping tool praised among the design community for its easy-to-use interface and gradual learning curve.”

We have a simple mission: to help designers make manifest their boundless creativity. ProtoPie isn’t a tool for the masses—it’s a tool if you want to stand out from the crowd. Create new interactions from scratch from our extensive library of formulas and variables. Build everything from basic click-throughs all the way through to high-fidelity prototypes that look, feel, and perform just like a real app. Test prototypes on your phone, computer, car, or gaming console. The choice is yours. With ProtoPie, the choices are endless.

Flinto is a rapid prototyping tool used by UX designers all over the world to create interactive prototypes—be they mobile, desktop or web apps.

Flinto is a paged-based prototyping tool. The user is presented with multiple screens that they can connect together through a thread of buttons. Tapping a button on one screen will take you to another. Page-based tools also give you a choice of different transitions between screens—for example, fade-in, slide in from the right or slide up from below.

While it’s a clunky prototyping tool, Flinto is a good way to quickly make mockups while you’re still figuring out the flow of an app. Flinto is also Mac-exclusive, only working with macOS 10.14 and iOS 12.0 or newer.

Easily one of Flinto’s strongest features, the Transition Designer is one of the fastest ways of tweaking a transition because it seamlessly provides direct visual feedback.

However, there are downsides to Flinto’s Transition Designer. If you want to animate different properties on the same object but with different timing, you’ll be out of luck.

Great tool for creating micro-interactions and animations

Flinto distinguishes itself from other prototyping tools by its wide array of unique capabilities, useful when creating micro-interactions and animation designs. For example, the feature ‘Behaviors’ allows for the use of reusable components in any given project, saving UX designers a lot of time.

Flinto’s transitions have a lot to boast about—they have 

. When going to the next page using a swipe gesture, the user can control the speed of the transition by using their finger, sliding back and forth as you might on an iOS app.

While Flinto is a good choice for creating animations and micro-interactions, it falls short of the finish line when it comes to high-fidelity prototyping. For example, it takes a needlessly long time for the user to add animations.

Moreover, there are serious limitations when it comes to creating interactions between different components in your prototype. In short, it’s great for simple designs, but it can’t handle complexity.

Windows users will find this deeply frustrating. Flinto only works on macOS 10.14 and iOS 12.0 or anything newer.

Prototypes can only be previewed on Mac and iPhone

This is unsurprising, considering that Flinto is an iOS-centric application. However, it’s seriously limiting—there are 

 worldwide, many of which are operated by businesses. UX designers should seriously consider this as a factor.

To make matters worse, previewing your prototype isn’t a simple process. In addition to installing Flinto, you have to download the iOS Viewer application if you want to 

Sharing options are limited in Flinto. There is no link with which to share your prototype. You can record the preview window and share a video file or upload it to Dribble. This is a real downside for a rapid prototyping tool. What’s the point of quickly creating a prototype if you can’t share it with your stakeholders?

Flinto is a solid tool for basic prototyping, better suited to micro-interactions rather than full flows. This is the major downside—it can’t handle complexity because it lacks more advanced features like interactive inputs and video players.

In stark contrast, ProtoPie is armed with powerful features. UX product designers find it easy to create really sophisticated prototypes because the process itself is so intuitive. The end results speak for themselves—whether it’s in micro-interactions or bigger, more complex prototypes. And in the end, the potential for seamless design collaboration is far greater with ProtoPie—sharing your high-fi prototypes is refreshingly simple.

Let’s go over the main reasons why ProtoPie is a better choice for creating hi-fi prototypes.

, it's possible to make prototypes with true dynamic interactions. With formulas, users can create dynamic interactions like password validation, counting the number of items in a shopping cart, and determining the total account balance. Whereas, variables are the ‘baskets’ that store any data that the user might want to use later—for example, a name, password, or account balance. Variables can be used anywhere in which formulas are used. 

If you want to learn more about how to use formulas and variables in your interactions, check out these 

Bring your prototypes to the next level by adding a voice to your interactions

Leaving aside the infinite combinations of triggers and responses you can set up, ProtoPie allows you to make your prototypes speak and listen to you with this unique feature—

All ProtoPie needs is a microphone and internet access and you can use prototypes with voice interactions on the following:

52 supported languages and language variants for listening

40 languages and language variants for speaking

 and create your own prototype with voice interaction. 

Prototype fully immersive smartwatch experiences with ProtoPie’s Smartwatch Solution

 allows for realistic smartwatch prototyping and fully immersive connected experiences involving smartwatches. The ProtoPie Smartwatch Solution is our 

 solution for thriving organizations that need to prototype immersive smartwatch experiences from A to Z.

View, experience, and test prototypes on a real Wear OS smartwatch easily.

“We have been using ProtoPie for a few years as a rapid prototyping tool. However, the experience was limited to evaluating smartwatch concepts on a phone or laptop screen.

Now with the new ProtoPie Smartwatch Solution, designers and researchers are empowered to explore concepts on real hardware

, on the user's wrist and in the context of use.”


- Jeff Hoefs, Staff UX Engineer at Google Wear OS

Product

What’s New in ProtoPie? Discover ProtoPie Labs

Latest posts

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What’s New? ProtoPie User Testing

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ProtoPie vs. InVision: Which Is Your Best Ally for High-Fidelity Prototyping?

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