The AppBuilder guide

AppBuilder turns your online store or website into an iPhone and Android app. You design the app in your browser while a phone next to it shows every change. When it looks right, you build it and send it to the App Store and Google Play.

There are three kinds of app, depending on where your store lives:

No coding is needed. You can change most things later and installed apps update without a new store release.

1. Sign up with your name, email and a password of at least 8 characters.
2. Confirm your email with the link we send (it works for 3 days). This lets you reset your password later.
3. Press Create an app, give it a name (up to 30 characters) and choose Shopify, WordPress or Any other website. For WordPress and websites, enter the website address.
4. The editor opens with your app ready to design.

Shopify apps start with demo products, so you can design before connecting your store. WordPress sites running WooCommerce get Home, Shop, Cart and Account tabs. For other websites, AppBuilder looks for your shop, cart and account pages and adds tabs for them.

Your dashboard

The dashboard lists your apps with their status: Draft (not published yet) or Live with its version number. From here you open, create or delete apps. Deleting an app also deletes its builds, analytics, notifications and icons, and can't be undone.

Open Settings in the editor. Store apps can connect a Shopify or a WooCommerce store; the one you edited last is used and marked In use.

Shopify

1. In Shopify admin, add the Headless sales channel and create a storefront.
2. Copy its Storefront API endpoint (it looks like https://your-store.myshopify.com/api/…/graphql.json) and its public Storefront access token into the builder.
3. Publish every product you want in the app to the Headless channel.

The builder checks the connection and shows Connected to your store name. If you paste your website address by mistake, it tells you.

Customer sign-in has three choices: Off, Classic accounts (email and password in the app) or New customer accounts (email and a one-time code). New customer accounts need the Customer Account API client ID from the Headless channel, and the callback address the builder shows must be added in Shopify. Your app needs an Account tab for sign-in.

WooCommerce

• Enter your Store address. You need WooCommerce 8.3 or later and permalinks set to anything except "Plain".
• For sign-in, sign-up, order history and account deletion in the app, install the free AppBuilder Connector plugin: download it from the builder, then in WordPress go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin and activate it.
• Then choose how customers sign in: Native (the app's own screens), Mixed (email and password in the app, other ways on your website) or Website (your own login pages). The builder recommends one based on the login plugins it finds.
• With the Connector you can also add Sign in with Google and Sign in with Apple. Step-by-step guides in the builder take about 10 minutes each.

Websites

Website apps need no connection. Under Website behaviour you choose which domains stay in the app, which open in a browser tab (for example payment pages), and whether to hide your site's own bottom bar or "get our app" banners.

Pages lists every screen in your tab bar. Open the home screen or a Custom page to add blocks, drag them into order, duplicate or delete them. Click a block in the phone preview to edit it.

Design templates give store apps a ready-made home screen (Boutique, Fresh Market, Glow, Home & Living, Minimal, Tech Hub). A template replaces your home screen, colours and tab bar style, straight away.

Deleting a block or applying a template happens at once, without asking. Changes are only live after you publish.

Tabs is your app's bottom bar, with up to 5 tabs. Tab types are Home, Shop, Cart, Account, New page and Website (website apps can also add Settings). Give each tab a label (up to 20 characters) and an icon. The home screen can't be removed.

Styles: Liquid glass, Classic, Floating, Material, Center button and Side menu. You can show labels always, only on the selected tab, or never, and show the number of items on the cart tab.

• Use your website's colours picks colours from your site; or start from a preset (Ink, Forest, Coral, Midnight).
• Set each colour: primary, text on primary, background, cards, text, secondary text and borders, and the corner rounding.
• iPhone icon: a PNG of exactly 1024 × 1024 pixels, no transparency, square corners (iPhone rounds them).
• Android icon: a PNG of exactly 512 × 512 pixels with your logo in the middle two thirds. It is also used on Google Play.

• Splash: the screen while the app opens. Choose a background, a logo (a square PNG, ideally 1024 × 1024 with a transparent background), a title and a subtitle.
• Onboarding: up to 5 welcome screens shown the first time someone opens the app, each with an image, a title and a short text.
• Login: the sign-in screen's titles, header, logo or banner, form colours and the style of the Apple and Google buttons.

Splash colour and logo changes need a new build. Onboarding only reaches people who install the app after you publish.

Store apps have extra settings on the home page's panel:

• Endless product feed under the home screen.
• Quick add to cart button, Favourites (heart), Ratings from your reviews app and Product badges (Sale, New, Low stock, Sold out).
• Free shipping progress bar in the cart, Discount code field in the cart (gift cards too on Shopify) and a Terms box before checkout.

Shopify apps can also have:

• Order note in the cart for delivery instructions or a gift message.
• Product suggestions: "Pairs well with" from Shopify Search & Discovery, and "You may also like".
• Reviews under the product from Okendo or Judge.me.
• Website widgets on the product page: show a part of your product web page, such as a reviews box or size chart, in the app.
• Buy some products on the website: products with a tag you choose open on your website, for options the app can't show (engraving, uploads).
• Search with Shopify or Searchanise, and Product details from apps (up to 10 product fields).

Subscriptions and pre-orders, bundles, discounts and Search & Discovery filters show up on their own. See Your Shopify apps.

In Features, each feature only adds the phone permissions it needs:

• Rating prompt: asks for an App Store or Google Play rating after a number of launches you choose.
• Biometric app lock: Face ID or fingerprint to open the app (Business plan).
• QR and barcode scanner (Business plan).
• Haptic feedback and File downloads.
• Age check: "Are you 18 or older?" once at launch; answering no keeps the app closed.
• Keep pages for offline use, with your own offline message.

Features outside your plan work in the preview but block publishing until you upgrade.

The phone in the editor runs your real app and updates as you edit. You can change the device, the language and the orientation.

On your own phone

1. Install the AppBuilder app on your iPhone or Android phone.
2. In the builder press Test on device and scan the QR code, or type your app's code in the AppBuilder app.
3. Your draft opens. Changes appear a couple of seconds after they save.

You can also edit on your phone: in the AppBuilder app, sign in or scan the code from Sign in on your phone in your dashboard's account menu. Some settings, such as store connections and store submission, are only in the web builder.

Every edit saves to a draft automatically. Your customers see nothing until you press Publish, which makes the draft live and raises the version number.

If you edit the same app on two devices, the builder warns you and offers to reload, so you don't overwrite newer work.

Open Build. Builds always use your published version, so publish first. A build takes several minutes and shows each step. Only one build per app runs at a time.

Android

Build APK makes an Android app you can download and install on phones for testing. Later builds install over it and keep its data.

Google Play needs an app bundle (AAB) uploaded under your own Google Play developer account. Bundle builds aren't available yet.

iPhone

Build for iPhone sends the app to App Store Connect, where it appears in TestFlight within about 30 minutes. Before the first iPhone build the app needs a record in App Store Connect with the bundle ID shown in the panel. Add testers in TestFlight; to go on the App Store, submit a build for review in App Store Connect.

Build statuses: Waiting for the build machine, Building, Ready (or In TestFlight) and Failed, with the build log.

Submit prepares you for Apple and Google review:

• Privacy: privacy policy and support pages (both stores require a privacy policy), whether people can create accounts (then you need an in-app account deletion page), tracking, and the Privacy choices sheet (off, everywhere, or in the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland).
• Review kit: a demo account and notes for the reviewer, plus review notes ready to copy into App Store Connect.
• Pre-submit checks: tests your store, pages, links, demo account and app against common rejection reasons, and lists what to fix.
• Drafts of the App Store App Privacy answers and Google Play Data safety form, and the permissions your build asks for.

1. Turn on Push notifications and choose when the app asks for permission: on first launch, or after the first add to cart.
2. Write a Title (up to 65 characters) and Message (up to 240).
3. Choose what opens when tapped: the app, a tab, a collection, a product or a web page.
4. Press Send. It goes to every phone with the app that allowed notifications.

Sending is part of Pro and Business. Sent notifications shows how many were delivered and how many failed.

For the last 7, 30 or 90 days: installs, active users, sessions, revenue and orders, product views, adds to cart, checkouts started and conversion, with a daily chart, top products, top searches and the iPhone/Android split.

Data is anonymous and counts only installed apps, not the builder's preview.

Shopify apps (plugins) don't run inside a mobile app the way they run on your website. AppBuilder reaches what they do in one of three ways:

• Through Shopify itself. Apps that store their work in Shopify (subscriptions, pre-orders, bundles, discounts, review stars, filters, translations) work in the app's screens with no setup.
• Through the app's public key. A few apps have a public interface. Paste their public key in the builder (for example Okendo reviews, Searchanise search).
• On your store's pages. Chat, loyalty, tracking and returns widgets work on your store pages shown in the app (website tabs, the in-app browser or a website widget on the product page).

Tested on a real store

What doesn't carry over

• Your theme, app blocks and app embeds don't appear on the app's own screens.
• Prices show in your store's main currency.
• Post-purchase upsells don't run for app orders, and ad pixels only see checkout events.
• Favourites are saved on the phone, not in your store.

Not sure about an app you use? Ask us and we'll check it.

Starter is free: design, preview and test on your phone. Prices and the full list are on the Pricing page. You can change or cancel your plan any time from Manage billing.

• Forgot your password? Request a reset link on the sign-in page. It works once, for one hour, and signs you out everywhere else.
• Phones. Sign in on your phone shows a QR code that works once and changes every 5 minutes. Signed-in phones lets you sign a phone out.
• Builder language. The builder is available in 21 languages; pick one from the language menu.
• App language. In Settings, App language follows the phone's language or a fixed one. Your products and texts stay as you wrote them.

My website doesn't show in the preview.

Some sites block being shown inside other pages. On a phone the app loads the site directly, so it works there.

Products are missing in my Shopify app.

Publish them to the Headless sales channel in Shopify.

Subscriptions don't show.

Your Storefront access token needs the selling plans permission. The pre-submit checks tell you if it's missing.

I changed my splash screen but nothing happened.

Splash colour and logo need a new build. Most other changes only need Publish.

Does my store need HTTPS?

Yes. Stores and pages must use https://.

Still stuck? Contact us.