Glide to iPhone app
Turn your Glide app into a real iPhone app
Borel turns a Glide app into a native iPhone app you can put on the App Store. Paste your glide.page address and describe your tables, and Borel builds the same lists, details and forms in SwiftUI, with your colours and logo. You try it on a real iOS Simulator in your browser, install it on your phone, then publish.
Updated
Native apps built by Borel, in the iOS Simulator.
Glide
What does Glide make?
Glide turns the spreadsheets a business runs on into apps for its team: inventories, field reports, directories and dashboards. Each app is hosted at a glide.page address.
The data sits in Glide Tables, or in a source you connect such as Google Sheets, Airtable or Excel, and the app's screens are views onto those rows.
The iPhone question
Why can't a Glide app go on the App Store?
Glide's help centre answers this directly: Glide apps are progressive web apps, and publishing to the App Store or Google Play isn't supported. People add your app to their home screen from the browser instead.
That's fine for a team you can send a link to. It's harder for customers, who look for apps in the App Store, and a web app wrapped to get there runs into Apple's guideline 4.2.
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 Glide 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 Glide app into an iPhone app
- 1
Share your Glide app's link
Copy the glide.page address, or your custom domain, with https:// in front. If the app is private, screenshots are the way in.
- 2
List your tables for Borel
Send the prompt below with your table names and their columns. Attach screenshots of the main screens, up to four per message.
- 3
Lists and forms, built natively
Borel reads what the public page shows, studies your screenshots, and writes SwiftUI lists, detail screens and forms backed by tables in its cloud.
- 4
Check it on an iPhone
The iOS Simulator runs the app in your browser without charge. Then Borel Companion, on Pro, installs it on the phone you carry.
- 5
Publish where customers look
Pro and an Apple Developer membership let Borel build, sign and upload the app to App Store Connect for review.
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.
Make a native iPhone app like my Glide app at <your address>. Tables: [table name: columns], [table name: columns]. Each table is a list with a detail screen and an add form. Users sign in with email and see only their own rows. Keep our colours and logo.
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 Glide app | In the iPhone app |
|---|---|
| Colours and logo | Moves over. Read from the glide.page app, or from a screenshot. |
| Screens | Moves over. Collections, details and forms become SwiftUI lists, detail views and forms. |
| Table structure | Moves over. The tables and columns you list become tables in Borel's cloud, each with an access rule. |
| Rows of data | Made new. Not imported from Glide Tables or Sheets; start fresh, or ask for starter rows to edit. |
| Users | Made new. Accounts in the iPhone app, by email and password. |
| Computed columns and actions | Made new. Say what each one does and Borel writes it in Swift. |
| Your Glide app | Stays. Still at glide.page for your team. |
Frequently asked questions
No. Borel works from the app's public page, your screenshots and the tables you describe. The iPhone app gets its own database in Borel's cloud, with your columns.
No. It's a native iPhone app in Swift, compiled with Xcode and installed like any app from the App Store or, for yourself, with Companion.
Yes. Borel's tables come with an access rule, such as rows that only the signed-in person who made them can see.
Yes. For a few people, Borel Companion, on Pro, installs it on each person's iPhone with a free Apple ID, no App Store needed.
There's no import from Glide. Small lists can go in as starter rows you paste in the chat; larger ones are entered in the app itself.