Read from Apple’s and Google’s own pages
Can I turn my website into an app? Three ways to do it, and what Apple and Google allow
Yes, and there are three quite different ways to do it. Your customers can add your website to their phone’s home screen, where it opens like an app; Apple’s own iPhone guide calls this “Turn a website into an app”. You can wrap the website in an app and put it in the stores, which Google Play doesn’t forbid for your own site, though Apple’s rules ask for more than “a repackaged website”. Or you can build an app around the one or two things your customers come back to do. Which one fits depends mostly on how often they come back.
The short version
- The quickest way costs nothing and needs no app store. On an iPhone, Safari can add a website to the Home Screen so that it opens “just like an app”. On Android, Chrome can install websites set up as web apps. But each customer has to do it on their own phone.
- Google Play doesn’t rule out a wrapped website, if it’s your own and it does its job. Google bans web-view apps of a website “without permission from the website owner or administrator”, and separately bans apps “that only have limited functionality and content”.
- Apple asks for more. Its review guidelines say an app should “elevate it beyond a repackaged website”, and that one without lasting value or adequate utility “may not be accepted”.
- If you use an app-building service, the app goes in under your own account. Apple rejects template apps unless they’re “submitted directly by the provider of the app’s content”, which is you.
- Customers who visit once don’t need an app. Customers who book, reorder or check something every week might.
Way 1: put your website on your customers’ home screens
On an iPhone this is built into Safari, and Apple’s iPhone User Guide has a page for it, called “Turn a website into an app in Safari on iPhone”. Open the website, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, and “Turn on Open as Web App.” In Apple’s words, “When you tap the icon, the website opens just like an app. You can receive notifications from the web app and quit the web app like you would any app.”
On Android, Chrome uses the same name. Google’s Chrome Help says “A web app is an app built for the web that you can access on any device.” Its Android steps start from “a website with a web app that you want to install”: tap More, then Install and create shortcut, then Install. Google adds that “Some web apps include extra features, like more storage to browse content offline, notifications, file system access and icon badges.”
Developers call a website built to be installed like this a progressive web app, or PWA. Mozilla’s developer reference defines one as “an app that's built using web platform technologies, but that provides a user experience like that of a platform-specific app”.
What it doesn’t do
The catch is one line in Apple’s guide: “The icon appears only on the device where you add it.” Nobody finds your business this way in the App Store or Google Play. Each customer has to visit your website first, know the option exists, and add it themselves. So it’s a way to keep your regulars close, not a way to be found.
It’s also free to try. Open your own website on your phone tonight and add it to your Home Screen: in a minute you’ll see what your customers would get. Chrome’s Android steps are for “a website with a web app”, so if yours doesn’t offer Install, ask whoever looks after your website whether it’s set up as one.
Way 2: wrap your website in an app
Search for “convert website to app” and much of what comes back is services that do this: an app whose main screen shows your website, with your name and icon in the App Store and Google Play. Developers call the window that shows the website a web view. The stores treat it like any other app, so their rules decide whether it gets in.
What Google Play allows
Google Play’s spam policy says: “We don’t allow apps whose primary purpose is to drive affiliate traffic to a website or provide a web view of a website without permission from the website owner or administrator.” Its example of a breach is an app that “simply provides a web view of Google Shopping”, which is someone else’s website. An app showing your own website, published by you, isn’t what that rule is aimed at.
The functionality policy is the one to read twice: “We do not allow apps that only have limited functionality and content”, and the first example it gives is “Apps that are static without app-specific functionalities”. In our reading, a wrapper around a brochure website, with nothing added for the phone, sits close to that line. Google doesn’t say exactly where the line is.
What Apple allows
Apple’s App Review Guidelines (last updated 16 October 2026) are blunter. Guideline 4.2, Minimum Functionality, opens: “Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website.” A little further on: “If your App doesn’t provide some sort of lasting entertainment value or adequate utility, it may not be accepted.” Guideline 4.2.2 adds: “Other than catalogs, apps shouldn’t primarily be marketing materials, advertisements, web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links.”
Note the verb. Apple says an app like that “may not be accepted”, not that it will be refused. The question a wrapped website has to answer is what it does that your website in Safari doesn’t.
Who submits it
Guideline 4.2.6 is about app-building services: “Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app’s content.” It goes on: “These services should not submit apps on behalf of their clients”. So if you use one, the app goes into the App Store under your own Apple developer account. For a company that means a D-U-N-S number and an Apple developer account of your own.
Way 3: build an app around what your customers come back to do
The third way starts from a different question. Not “how do I get my website into the stores?”, but “what do my customers do on my website again and again?” Booking the next appointment. Reordering the usual. Checking where an order has got to. Collecting a stamp on a loyalty card. Hearing when something is back in stock.
A website can do all of those. What changes is that the app is built for that one job rather than for everything your website does: it opens straight to the booking or the order, it can use the phone’s own features where the job needs them, and it’s in the App Store and Google Play where people can find it. An app like that usually connects to the systems you already use, such as your booking system, your online shop or your stock list. It’s a bigger job than a wrapper, and it’s the kind of app Apple’s 4.2 is describing: one that does something your website in Safari doesn’t.
This is the kind of app we build, so we have an interest here, which is why the other two ways come first. You don’t need to know exactly what you want before you start: you try the real app on your own phone, with realistic stand-ins for anything not connected yet, and we change it until it’s right. It’s published in your name, on your own App Store and Google Play accounts. How we build apps.
Which one fits your business
| Add to home screen | Wrap the website | Build an app around a task | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where customers find it | On your website | Your website, the App Store and Google Play | Your website, the App Store and Google Play |
| Who installs it | Each customer, from your website | Each customer, from the stores | Each customer, from the stores |
| Store review | None | Yes. Apple asks for more than a repackaged website | Yes |
| Published under | Nothing to publish | Your own developer accounts | Your own developer accounts |
| Best for | Regulars who’d like a shortcut | A site that already works well as an app on a phone, if Apple agrees | Something customers do again and again |
A rule of thumb: if most customers visit once (a plumber, a wedding venue, a solicitor), the website is the right tool, and making sure it works properly on a phone matters more than an app. Here’s how to check yours. If they come back every week (a café’s regulars, a gym, a salon, a trade counter), an app can earn its place.
Whose name goes on the app
Whichever store route you take, check whose account the app is published under, because the stores are putting more weight on it. From 1 March 2027 Google Play moves to “an online marketplace model in the EEA and the UK”. On Google’s trader status page, from that date users in the UK see this: “Your developer/trader name will replace Google in the 'Offered by' field”. Users everywhere will also see the developer’s contact details and D-U-N-S number on the app’s page. Every developer account must declare by 1 February 2027 whether it’s a trader, meaning in business.
So if a converter or an agency publishes your app under its own account, its name is the one your customers will see. Apple’s 4.2.6 already asks for template apps to be submitted by the provider of the content, which is you. It’s the first thing to agree with anyone you hire to build an app.
What argues the other way
- A wrapper can be a sensible first step. If your website already does the job well on a phone, Google Play doesn’t forbid it for your own site, and Apple’s word is “may”, not “will”.
- The home-screen route may be all you need. It costs nothing, needs no review and can be tried today.
- An app is one more thing to look after. New versions of iOS and Android arrive every year, and the stores change their rules: Google’s trader declaration and its 2027 dates are this year’s example.
- Our interest. We build apps for UK businesses. That’s why this post puts the free option first and says plainly when a website is enough.
Sources, and what we checked
- Apple: App Review Guidelines (“Last Updated: October 16, 2026”), and the iPhone User Guide (UK): Turn a website into an app in Safari on iPhone and Bookmark a website in Safari on iPhone.
- Google: Chrome Help, Use web apps (Android version), and Play Console Help, read in UK English: Spam, Functionality, content and user experience and Trader status declaration.
- Mozilla: Progressive web apps (MDN Web Docs).
- All of the pages above were read in full on 31 October 2026, and again on 2 November 2026. Every quotation was checked word for word against the page it comes from, keeping Apple’s and Mozilla’s US spellings.