Your AI built a website. The App Store wants an app.

Someone told you to "just publish it to the App Store" and you went looking for the button. There isn't one. Apps built with Lovable, Bolt, or similar tools are websites first. Getting them into an app store takes extra steps, and sometimes it's not worth doing at all. Here's what your options actually are.

The four things people mean by "app"

• Web app: what you already have. It lives at a web address and opens in a browser like Safari or Chrome. Anyone can visit it on a phone, tablet, or computer.
• PWA (progressive web app): the same web app, set up so a phone can save it to the home screen with an icon, and so it can work a bit offline. No app store involved.
• Wrapper app: a thin shell that opens your website inside something that looks like a native app, so it can go through the App Store or Google Play. The code inside is still your website.
• Native app: built directly for iPhone or Android using their own tools (Swift, Kotlin). This is a different build from scratch, not a version of your web app.

Why Apple says no to thin wrappers

Apple has a rule called guideline 4.2, "Minimum Functionality." It says an app can't just be a website stuffed into an app shell with nothing else added. If you submit a wrapper that only loads your site and does nothing a browser can't already do, Apple can reject it. This happens a lot. It's not a bug in the process, it's the rule working as intended.

The free option that gets you most of the way

Before you pay anyone for a wrapper, try "Add to Home Screen." On an iPhone, open your web app in Safari, tap the share icon, then "Add to Home Screen." On Android, Chrome will often offer to "Install app" on its own. This gives you an icon, a full-screen view with no browser bar, and for a lot of small tools, that's the whole ask. No app store, no yearly fee, no review process.

What it actually costs

Apple charges $99 a year to be a developer and put anything in the App Store, no matter how you built it. Google charges $25 once for a Play Store account. On top of that, if you use a wrapper service, expect a separate monthly or one-time fee to that service, since $99 and $25 are just the store fees, not the wrapping tool.

When paying for a wrapper makes sense

Pay for a wrapper if people need to find your app by searching the App Store or Play Store, if you want it to feel installed rather than opened, or if you need a feature only the store gives you, like in-app purchases through Apple's system. If your users already know your web address and just want a shortcut on their phone, skip the wrapper and use Add to Home Screen instead. It costs nothing and takes two minutes.

Plyo saves every version of your app automatically, so if you try a wrapper tool and it breaks something, you can undo it and go back to the version that worked.

Ask your AI before you touch anything

Before you connect a wrapper tool or change your app's setup, use this prompt so the AI checks with you first instead of changing files on its own:

Start with Add to Home Screen. It's free, it's fast, and for most small apps built with AI tools, it's the right answer. Move to a wrapper or a native rebuild only when you have a real reason the store gives you something the home screen can't.