What's the latest way of submitting pwas to the app stores?

2 points by sloankev 2 years ago | 1 comment

I have a client who wants a mobile app on the app store (ios + android). Their mobile web experience is more than good enough, and they shouldn't need to build another separate app from scratch for this simple use case, they aren't using any of the native apis. But they want their app searchable and installable from the app stores.

I've used Apache Cordova[0] years ago for this, but wondering what the current best option is.

The options are:

[0] Apache Cordova - I used this years ago, but wondering if it still holds up, I read that it's no longer maintained. Is it better to create an expo app and use the webview component?[1] Has anyone tried pwa builder?[2]

Thank you for any insights!

[0]https://cordova.apache.org/ [1]https://docs.expo.dev/versions/latest/sdk/webview/ [2]https://www.pwabuilder.com/

Aulig 2 years ago |

Disclosure: I run https://webtoapp.design where I convert websites into mobile apps (and help publish them).

Basically, yes, wrap it in a WebView. I'd need to see your mobile website to judge it better, but if it looks like a website, Apple might reject it. Your website really needs to look like an app to have some certainty of getting it through if your app only consists of a WebView.

At webtoapp.design we usually include some native components in the apps. Although they might not add functionality (just replaces some website components), they help get the app published.

I guess you'll have to decide based on your hourly rate whether it's worth it to tinker with some self-built solution or if you are also open to going with a finished product. I don't want this to sound too much like an ad, just expanding on the time save (because often you don't think about all the things in advance): - If your client decides he wants push notifications: A finished solution should already have support for that - For Apple, you'll also need to set up your Xcode developer environment and manage all the certificates and provisioning profiles (personally, I found that complicated when I started out). With webtoapp.design we handle all of that automatically (we upload a finished build to your developer account) - not sure if some competitors do that too.