The store is open and customers order on the website. The next question is often whether there could be an app, so regulars open it from their home screen.
Your store is a website
A Shopify storefront is a website: the theme decides how it looks, and customers browse, add to cart and check out in a browser. It is not an iOS app, and it does not appear on the App Store.
Almost everything an app needs is already in Shopify, though: products, inventory, prices, the cart, checkout, orders. An iOS app does not have to move any of it. It needs a native front on top of it.
App builders and wrappers
The Shopify App Store has a Mobile app builder category. On October 1, 2026 it listed 106 apps, under the description “Send customers direct notifications about new products and insider discounts with your own branded app.”
The other route is a native shell around your store’s address. It runs into Apple’s Guideline 4.2, which asks for features, content and UI that elevate an app beyond a repackaged website, and a WebView around a store’s address is a repackaged website.
Two pieces Shopify documents
Shopify’s developer documentation describes two pieces for mobile apps. The Storefront API gives an app the store’s products, collections and search, the cart, and customer accounts. Checkout Kit is an open-source SDK that presents Shopify’s own checkout inside a Swift app, with your branding, checkout settings and payment methods; Shop Pay and Apple Pay buttons can sit on product and cart pages for one-tap buying.
- Products and collectionsinventory, prices, imagesStorefront APICatalogue and product pagesnative grids, details, variant pickers
- The cartthe same one the website usesStorefront APIThe carta sheet, open from anywhere
- Checkout and paymentsyour checkout settings and discountsCheckout KitCheckoutShopify’s own checkout, inside the app
- Customer accountsorder historyStorefront APIYour orderspast orders after sign-in
The iOS app you bring to AirBuild is planned around those two pieces: orders land in your Shopify admin as they do today, and payments go through Shopify’s checkout.
One store, as an app
Take a store that sells coffee beans. Every page of the website has a place in the app, shaped the way an iPhone expects.
The store’s website
/collections/coffeeevery coffee, by origin/products/ethiopiadropdowns for grind and size/accountpast ordersThe native app
How bringing it works
Leave the link
Join the waitlist with your store’s address and a sentence about what the app should do and who it is for: “for regulars, and it remembers the beans they usually buy.”
Your AI team builds the app in SwiftUI
AirBuild’s product, design and engineering agents read your store, its collections, products and the way people buy, and build a native iOS app from it. The store itself is not changed.
Try it on your iPhone, then App Review
The app reaches your phone through TestFlight so you can try it and ask for changes in plain language. When it is ready, AirBuild prepares the App Store listing, submits, tracks the review, replies to the reviewers, fixes what they raise and resubmits.
What to have ready
- Your store’s address.
- One sentence on who the app is for first and what it should do. It does not have to be every page of the website.
- The Shopify apps your store relies on, such as subscriptions or reviews, named in that sentence.
- An Apple Developer Program membership, or a plan to enroll before the app is submitted, and a privacy policy URL; App Store Connect will not accept a submission without one.
Questions
Can Shopify make an iOS app for my store?
Not by itself. A Shopify store is a website; the Shopify App Store’s Mobile app builder category lists more than a hundred third-party apps for that job. What Shopify itself documents for native apps is the Storefront API and Checkout Kit.
Can I wrap my store’s website as an app?
Often not for the App Store. Guideline 4.2 says an app should include features, content and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website, and a WebView around your store’s address is exactly that.
Do orders and payments still go through Shopify?
Yes. A native app reads products and manages the cart through the Storefront API, and Checkout Kit opens Shopify’s own checkout inside the app, so orders land in your Shopify admin as they do today.
What happens to my theme, apps and discounts?
Your store does not change; the theme, apps and settings stay in Shopify. Checkout is Shopify’s, so your checkout settings and discounts apply as usual. Tell us which apps your store relies on, and we plan the iOS app around them.
Do I need a Mac or Xcode?
Neither. AirBuild runs your AI team on a Mac or in the cloud, and the app reaches your iPhone through TestFlight. You do need an Apple Developer Program membership to publish.
Who owns the iOS app’s code?
You do. Your store stays in your Shopify account, and the SwiftUI project AirBuild builds is yours too.