Bolt to iPhone app
Turn your Bolt app into a real iPhone app
Built a web app with Bolt and now want it on the App Store? Borel rebuilds it as a native iPhone app. Paste your bolt.host address, and Borel reads the site, photographs it and writes a SwiftUI app with your colours, logo and screens. No Expo, no terminal and no Mac: you test and publish from the browser.
Updated
Native apps built by Borel, in the iOS Simulator.
Bolt
What does Bolt make?
Bolt is an AI builder that runs in the browser and writes websites, web apps and mobile apps. Most Bolt projects are web apps, published for free at an address ending in bolt.host.
A project can carry its own built-in database, so sign-ups, lists and records live inside Bolt's cloud rather than in your code.
The iPhone question
Why can't a Bolt web app simply go on the App Store?
Bolt's own Expo guide says projects created for web don't easily switch over to mobile. A Bolt web app is HTML and React for a browser, and there is no button that turns it into an iPhone app.
Bolt's mobile route is a separate Expo project in React Native, which you take through TestFlight and App Store submission yourself, with Expo's command-line tools. So either way, the screens get built again. Borel's rebuild is in Swift, the iPhone's own language, and the publishing happens from the browser.
Apple's rule
Why a rebuild beats a wrapper
Apple reviews every app before it reaches the App Store, and a website in an app's frame is what its guideline 4.2 is about.
“Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store.”
Borel never wraps your Bolt app. It writes a separate app in Swift with SwiftUI, Apple’s own language and interface framework, so the screens, scrolling and controls are the iPhone’s.
Step by step
How to turn your Bolt app into an iPhone app
- 1
Grab the bolt.host link
Publish the project if it isn't live yet, then copy the whole address, https:// included. A custom domain works the same way.
- 2
Paste it with a short brief
Use the prompt below as your first message on borel.one. Pictures of logged-in screens help, so attach those too: four fit in one message.
- 3
Borel writes the Swift version
The Mac photographs your page as a phone and a desktop would show it, the site's colours, logo and copy are read, and SwiftUI screens replace the web layout.
- 4
Try it on a live iPhone
Tap through the app in the iOS Simulator inside your browser, at no cost. Then Borel Companion, on Pro, installs it on the iPhone in your pocket.
- 5
Publish without a terminal
On Pro, plus your Apple Developer membership, Borel compiles, signs and sends the app to App Store Connect. No eas-cli, no Node.js, no Xcode of your own.
Your first message
A prompt to start from
Put your address where it says, fill in the brackets, and send it as your first message.
Rebuild my Bolt web app at <your address> as a native iPhone app. Use its colours, logo and wording. Turn the navigation into a tab bar and the tables into iPhone lists. It needs accounts and a database for [what people store]. Screens: [list them].
Moving over
What moves over, and what is made new
Borel works from what your app shows, the screenshots you add and the words you write. It doesn't copy code or accounts out of another platform.
| In your Bolt app | In the iPhone app |
|---|---|
| Design | Moves over. Palette, logo, type and layout mood, taken from the bolt.host page and its pictures. |
| Screens | Moves over. Each one you show or describe becomes a SwiftUI screen with iPhone navigation. |
| Copy | Moves over. Headings and text from the public page, and anything you paste. |
| Bolt Database | Made new. New tables in Borel's cloud database, made from what the app stores. Existing rows stay in Bolt. |
| User accounts | Made new. Fresh sign-ups in the iPhone app, by email and password. |
| JavaScript and React | Made new. Not carried over. The iPhone app is Swift you can download. |
| Your bolt.host site | Stays. Still online for desktop and Android visitors. |
Frequently asked questions
No, it works from the published app, not from the project files. It reads and photographs the live page, and you add what it can't see by attaching screenshots or describing it.
Bolt's mobile apps are a separate Expo project in React Native that you publish with command-line tools. Borel writes Swift and SwiftUI, shows the real app in the iOS Simulator while you build, and submits to the App Store from the browser.
Not by themselves. The iPhone app gets its own database in Borel's cloud. If your records sit behind an API that takes a key, you can save that key under Tools › Keys after the first build and ask Borel to use it.
Neither. Borel compiles the app with Xcode on its own Mac and streams the simulator to your browser, so Windows works just as well.
Building and trying the app in the simulator works on the free plan's daily credits. Installing with Companion and publishing to the App Store come with Pro, and Apple charges $99 a year for its Developer Program.
Paste your bolt.host link
See your Bolt app as a native iPhone app before you decide anything.