Web app to iPhone app

Turn your web app into a real iPhone app

Already built your app with Lovable, Bolt, Base44, Bubble or by hand? Borel turns it into a native iPhone app. Paste its address, and Borel reads it, photographs it and writes the iPhone version in Swift with SwiftUI. Try it on a live iPhone in your browser, then publish it to the App Store.

Turn a website into an app

Paste its address

slowbar.se
Make it an app

Pick your platform

Where did you build it?

Each page walks through that platform: what it makes, why it isn't an iPhone app yet, and what moves over.

How it works

From your link to a native app

  • 1

    Paste your address

    Start a chat on borel.one with your app's full link. Borel opens up to two sites a message names, as any visitor would.

  • 2

    Borel looks and reads

    Its Mac photographs the first screen at iPhone and desktop size, and Borel reads the name, colours, logo, fonts and words.

  • 3

    Add what's behind the login

    Attach screenshots of the screens only members see, up to 4 in a message, and say what each one does.

  • 4

    A native app is written

    SwiftUI screens with the iPhone's own tabs, lists and sheets, compiled with Xcode on Borel's Mac.

  • 5

    Try it, keep it, ship it

    The iOS Simulator streams it to your browser for free. Borel Companion, on Pro, installs it on your iPhone, and Pro publishes it to the App Store.

Apple's rule

A rebuild, not a wrapper

The quick route from web to App Store puts your website inside an app frame. Apple's review guidelines ask for more.

“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.”
App Store Review Guidelines, 4.2 Minimum Functionality, Apple

A website in an app’s frame

What runs
A website inside an app's frame
Screens
Web pages styled to look like an app
Phone features
What the browser allows
The code you get
Your website's code

Borel

What runs
Swift code, compiled by Xcode
Screens
SwiftUI's own tabs, lists, sheets and navigation
Phone features
Camera, location, Face ID and more, through Apple's frameworks
The code you get
A SwiftUI project that opens in Xcode

Moving over

What comes with you

  • Moves over

    Your look, your logo, your screens and flows, and the words on the page or in your chat.

  • Made new

    The data tables, the sign-ins and the code: the iPhone app gets its own database, accounts and Swift.

  • Connects, if you want

    After the first build, save an API key under Tools › Keys and the app can read from your existing API.

  • Stays

    Your web app. Borel never changes it, so the website and the iPhone app run side by side.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, by rebuilding it. Borel reads your web app's address and writes a separate iPhone app in Swift with SwiftUI, with your look and screens, instead of putting the website inside an app frame.

No. Web code is HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and a native iPhone app is Swift, so Borel writes it fresh from what your app shows and what you tell it. You can download the Swift it writes.

Apple's guideline 4.2 asks apps to be more than a repackaged website, which is where wrapped web apps get into trouble. A SwiftUI rebuild is a real iPhone app. Apple still reviews every app on its own merits, so it has to be useful.

Not automatically. The iPhone app has its own accounts, with email and password, and its own database in Borel's cloud. If your data sits behind an API that takes a key, the app can read it through Tools › Keys.

Borel only sees what a signed-out visitor sees. Attach screenshots of the inner screens, up to 4 per message, and Borel builds them from the pictures.

No. Borel builds the app with Xcode on its own Mac and streams the simulator into your browser, so Windows and Chromebooks work too.

Paste your link

Watch Borel build the native version of your web app on a live iPhone.