Your iOS app

Your project can be an app on the App Store, under your name and with your icon, without a second codebase. Sapilon adds a small iPhone and iPad app to your project whose whole screen is your web app’s Live address. You keep building only the web app; every time you publish, the iOS app shows the change at once.

What do I get?

An ios/ folder in your project holding a native frame around your web app. It adds the things a phone does better than a web page:

• Its own sign-in screen, with your icon and colours. iPhone offers people their saved passwords for your address and offers to save new ones. Invited people choose their password there on their first sign-in, and anyone can reset a forgotten one. When your sign-up is open, people can create an account there too.
• Signing in signs your web app in. Logging off in the web app brings the sign-in screen back and leaves nothing of the person behind on the phone.
• Haptics: a tap you can feel when someone flips a switch, changes a tab, confirms something destructive, or sees a success or an error.
• The share sheet and the App Store rating prompt, for your web app to use.
• Links to other sites open in Safari, so a customer never gets stuck on a page with no way back.
• An offline screen with a Try again button, instead of a blank page, when there is no network.
• A launch screen in your app’s colour, with your icon.

The app loads your Live address: a customer should never land on test data or a server that has shut down. (Your team can try a test build that loads Rehearsal, see below.)

What do I need?

• An Apple Developer Program membership in your own name or your company’s. It costs US$99 a year, and enrolling a company takes a few days while Apple checks it. Apple publishes apps only for the person or company that owns them, so the account has to be yours.
• A project that has published to Live. The app needs an address to load.

You don’t need a Mac: Sapilon builds the app on one for you.

How do I create the iOS app?

1. Publish your project to Live, if you haven’t yet.
2. Open Publish, and on the Live server choose Get an iOS app. Once the app exists, it is in the Explorer under Your Apps → iOS, with five pages: iOS App, Apple, Publish, Testers and Store listing.

How do I connect my Apple account?

On the Apple page, once per company:

1. In App Store Connect, open Users and Access → Integrations → App Store Connect API. The first time, the Account Holder clicks Request access.
2. Choose Generate API Key, name it “Sapilon” and give it the Admin role. Apple needs that role to sign apps.
3. Download the key file. Apple offers it only once.
4. On the Apple page, choose the file and paste the Key ID and Issuer ID from the same page.

Sapilon checks the key with Apple straight away and keeps it sealed: it is never shown again, and every project in your organisation can use it. Disconnect forgets it; revoke it in App Store Connect too.

Then choose Set up with Apple. Sapilon registers your app’s bundle ID (the Team ID comes with it), turns on what sign-in and links need, and sets up ios/ for it.

What do I still do myself at Apple?

Apple lets only you do a few things. The Apple page lists each one, says why, and links to the exact screen:

• Create the app in App Store Connect (My Apps → + → New App). Apple doesn’t let anyone else create it. The Apple page shows the values to paste: name, language, bundle ID and SKU.
• Answer App Privacy in App Store Connect. The Store listing page suggests the answers for what every Sapilon app collects; add what your own features collect.
• Accept new agreements when Apple updates them. Sapilon tells you when Apple is waiting.
• Reply to App Review if Apple writes to you.

How do I publish to TestFlight?

TestFlight is Apple’s test channel. On the Publish page choose Publish to TestFlight. Sapilon builds the app on a Mac, uploads it to Apple, and sends it to TestFlight. That takes 15–40 minutes; you can leave the page, and Sapilon notifies you when it’s there.

• Your team, the people in App Store Connect → Users and Access, can install every build at once.
• Testers you invite on the Testers page, or anyone with the public link, get a build after Apple’s short Beta App Review. Add an App Review contact on the Store listing page first.
• Test against Rehearsal: choose it when publishing, and that build loads your Rehearsal server instead of Live. Only your team gets it, and it can never go to the App Store.

How do I publish to the App Store?

1. Fill in the Store listing: name, description, keywords, links (Apple needs a privacy policy page), category, screenshots and an App Review contact. Draft with the agent fills in the empty text for you to edit. For screenshots, upload your own or choose Capture from Live.
2. Choose Publish to App Store on the Publish page and pick the TestFlight build to send. What you tested is what goes to review.
3. Apple usually answers within a day or two. Sapilon follows the review and notifies you. Choose whether an approved version goes live at once or waits for your Release now.

Sapilon creates a demo account on Live for App Review to sign in with, and sends Apple its password. Give that account the data a reviewer needs to see the app working.

You only need a new App Store version when the iOS frame itself changes. Changes to your web app reach the iOS app through Publish to Live. The iOS App page says when the frame has changed since its last build.

What might Apple’s review ask?

• “Is this just a website?” (Guideline 4.2). It is applied unevenly, and it can happen to you. Point to what the iPhone adds: the sign-in screen, haptics, the share sheet, the offline screen, and what your app does for its customers. The Agent can help you draft the answer.
• Deleting an account. If people can create an account in the app (open sign-up), Apple requires a way to delete it in the app too. Ask the Agent to add one, then tick it off on the Apple page.
• Payments. Apple rejects apps that sell digital goods or subscriptions outside its in-app purchase in most countries. If your app sells them, hide purchasing in the app or check with the Agent first.
• Sign in with Google. Apple requires Sign in with Apple beside Google, so the iOS app hides Google. People who use Google can use Forgot password? to get a password for the same account.

I added a custom domain. What happens to the app?

Nothing, until you move it. The app keeps loading the address it was created with, which keeps working. Once your own web address is live, the iOS App page offers Update address. Choose it, publish to Live again, then publish the iOS app again.

Can I still build it on my own Mac?

Yes. The iOS App page has the Xcode steps, under Build on your own Mac instead.

Can the Agent change the iOS app?

It can read and edit the Swift code in ios/App/, for small changes such as a colour or which links stay inside the app. It cannot build or run the iOS app itself; publish it from the iOS area to try a change. Anything that changes what your product does belongs in the web app, where every customer gets it, in every browser and in the app.