Project-based teaching is a practical instructional model well-suited for software development courses. The HarmonyOS Application Development course combines both theoretical and practical components, yet traditional teaching approaches struggle to meet its talent cultivation requirements. This paper employs project-based teaching as the core methodology, examines its alignment with the HarmonyOS Application Development curriculum, identifies existing challenges in project design, implementation, and evaluation, and explores practical solutions through three dimensions: project framework development, teaching implementation optimization, and evaluation mechanism enhancement. The findings provide theoretical insights and actionable strategies to improve course quality and cultivate students’ hands-on application development skills and engineering literacy in HarmonyOS.