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Some examples - sometimes the system "knows" what platform a train will depart from, but it's not announced publicly until the train staff are fully ready to receive passengers. For instance at Euston typically a train is sitting in a platform being cleaned/prepped for a while before it's due to leave, it's 100% leaving from that platform, but they wait to announce the platform 10/15mins before, when they do there's a massive rush from the main concourse to the platform entrance.
If an app wants to be cleverer, you can also guess/predict platforms by looking at various train codes & figure out if an earlier train arrives in at a particular platform, that train is going to form this later train, so you can guess where it's going to be before some of the station staff know.
They can also display expected platforms - i.e. the plan for which platform a train is going to be on as part of the schedule - this can be risky as trains regularly come in on randomly different platforms. Depends on the shape of the station, tho, obvs if a station only has two platforms (e.g. North/South) a train can only ever be on one platform.
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ibob
What do these do that national rail app or website doesn't? The 'live trains' function seems pretty real time and shows platforms.