WordPress to iPhone app
Turn your WordPress site into a real iPhone app
Borel turns a WordPress site into a native iPhone app, without a plugin. Paste your site's address, and Borel reads its name, colours, logo, menus and posts, photographs the front page and writes a SwiftUI app around them. You try it on a live iOS Simulator in your browser, install it on your iPhone and publish it to the App Store.
Updated
Native apps built by Borel, in the iOS Simulator.
WordPress
What does WordPress make?
WordPress is open-source publishing software for websites of every kind: blogs, magazines, shops, clubs and company sites, themed and extended with plugins.
It runs on your own hosting or on WordPress.com, where a site without a custom domain lives at a .wordpress.com address.
The iPhone question
Isn't there a WordPress app already?
There is, for the people who run the site. The WordPress mobile app lets you write posts, answer comments and watch your traffic. Your readers and customers still meet your site in Safari.
Plugins and services that turn a theme into an app mostly put your pages in a web view. That's quick, but it's also the repackaged website Apple's guideline 4.2 describes. A native rebuild gives readers screens made for the phone.
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 WordPress 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 WordPress site into an iPhone app
- 1
Copy your site's front page
Your domain or the wordpress.com address, typed with https://. Self-hosted or WordPress.com, it makes no difference to Borel.
- 2
Explain what readers will do
Send the prompt below. A reading app, a shop window or a member club? Say which, and attach screenshots of key pages, four per message.
- 3
Native screens from your theme
Borel pictures the front page at phone and desktop width, reads your menu, colours and recent posts, and turns them into tabs, lists and readable article screens.
- 4
Read it on an iPhone
Scroll your app in the iOS Simulator inside the browser, for free. Borel Companion, on Pro, installs it on your own phone to read on the go.
- 5
Ship it
With Pro and an Apple Developer membership, Borel signs the app and submits it to App Store Connect. No plugin goes on your server.
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 WordPress site at <your address>. Keep the name, logo, colours and menu sections. Readers browse [posts, products or events], save favourites and make an account 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 WordPress site | In the iPhone app |
|---|---|
| Theme look | Moves over. Colours, logo and type, read from your front page. |
| Menu and categories | Moves over. Your main navigation becomes the app's tabs and sections. |
| Posts and pages | Moves over. What the front page shows becomes starter content; paste in more if you like. |
| Plugins | Made new. What a plugin does is rebuilt natively when you ask for it, such as forms, events or a directory. |
| Site users | Made new. Readers make an account in the app with email and password. |
| PHP and theme code | Made new. Not used. The app is Swift, yours to download. |
| Your WordPress site | Stays. No plugin, no change on your server. |
Frequently asked questions
No. Borel reads your public site from the outside, so nothing gets installed on your WordPress server and nothing changes in wp-admin.
Not by default. The app keeps its content in Borel's cloud. You can ask Borel to read your site again and refresh the app's content whenever you publish something important.
Borel can show your products, let people save them and keep accounts. Selling physical goods through the app isn't something Borel sets up; digital extras can be sold with Apple's in-app purchases.
Either. Borel only needs a public address it can open.
You do, under your own Apple developer account. Borel builds and uploads it for you, and the Swift code is yours to download.
Paste your WordPress site
See your site as a native iPhone app before you choose a plugin.