Squarespace to iPhone app
Turn your Squarespace site into a real iPhone app
Borel turns a Squarespace site into a native iPhone app for your customers. Paste the site's address: Borel reads its name, palette, logo and pages, photographs the home page and writes an app in SwiftUI that does something useful with them. Test it on a live iPhone in your browser, install it on your own phone, and publish it to the App Store.
Updated
Native apps built by Borel, in the iOS Simulator.
Squarespace
What does Squarespace make?
Squarespace is a website builder known for its templates: portfolios, studios, shops and small-business sites. Every site has a built-in address like yoursiteid.squarespace.com, usually behind a domain of your own.
Its strength is presentation: big photography, clean type and pages that look professional with little effort.
The iPhone question
Is there a Squarespace app for my customers?
The Squarespace app is for you, the site owner: its help page describes editing your site from your phone. It doesn't turn your site into an app that your customers download.
A Squarespace site on an iPhone is a page in Safari. Wrapping it in an app shell gives you an icon, but Apple's guideline 4.2 asks for more than a repackaged website, so the app should give customers something to do.
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 Squarespace site. 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 Squarespace site into an iPhone app
- 1
Copy your site's link
The domain customers type, or the squarespace.com address, with https:// at the start.
- 2
Describe the app around it
Send the prompt below with what customers would do: browse, save, book, ask. Pictures of inner pages are welcome, four per message.
- 3
From template to SwiftUI
Borel photographs your home page for phone and desktop, reads your palette, type and items, and lays out native screens that carry the same calm.
- 4
Try it on a live iPhone
The iOS Simulator streams the app to your browser, free on every plan. Borel Companion, on Pro, gets it onto your phone for real-world testing.
- 5
Put it on the App Store
With Pro and Apple's Developer Program, Borel does the build, signing and upload to App Store Connect for you.
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 for my Squarespace site at <your address>. Keep the name, logo, colours and photography style. Customers can [what they do] and save what they like to an account made with email.
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 Squarespace site | In the iPhone app |
|---|---|
| Style | Moves over. Palette, type and the template's feel, from the published site. |
| Pages and items | Moves over. Services, products or portfolio pieces the page shows become starter content. |
| Text | Moves over. Your wording, kept in your site's language. |
| Photos | Made new. Your logo comes along; other pictures you want in the app, attach in the chat. |
| Customer accounts | Made new. Made fresh in the app, by email and password. |
| Commerce and scheduling | Made new. Built as native screens if you ask for them; nothing is read from your Squarespace dashboard. |
| Your Squarespace site | Stays. Live and edited in Squarespace. |
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Paste your site's address into Borel's chat and describe what the app is for. Borel writes the Swift for you, and you ask for changes in plain words.
Your logo is picked up from the site. Attach any other photos you want in the app to a message, and Borel places them where you ask.
No. It reads the public site only, so nothing in your Squarespace account changes.
When it does something useful, yes. Apple turns away apps that only repackage a website, so give yours a purpose, like saving favourites, a member area or a booking request, and Borel builds it natively.
Yes. Borel Companion, on Pro, puts it on your own iPhone with a free Apple ID, so you can live with it before anyone else sees it.
Paste your Squarespace site
Watch your site's look turn into a native iPhone app.