Can a PWA app be published to app store and play store

Question

I am creating a React JS web app which will eventually be converted to a PWA so that the users can install it on their mobile devices. Now the client ask to find out a way to push these PWA apps to apple store and google store. So my query is whether we have tools for converting the Progessive Web Apps as apk or ipa files so that we can put them to apple store or play store.

I googled a bit and is right now confused because some say it is possible, some say not possible in Apple store. I also saw some tools like PWABuilder, but I am not sure which one is the right one to use and whether we can publish a PWA app to the app store and play store.

Any help on this will be very grateful.

Thanks

Answer 1

While it is possible in both cases, publishing a PWA on the Apple Store is an incredible difficult journey, because Apple engineers try to build obstacles all the way long. This is by decision as Apple is making profits from its app store and PWAs would indeed subtract some of these gains. This is also the reason why Safari, as browser, is incredibly behind the other competitors in supporting PWAs APIs (PUSH API for example, as they promote their Apple Push Notification Service (APNs)).

Long story short, I would concentrate on Google Play Store, where you can publish a PWA after having wrapped it into a Trusted Web Activity (TWA), allowing Chrome (v72 or later) to run a website in fullscreen mode without a browser toolbar within an APK (Android Package). You can find further details in this tutorial to publish a PWA on the play store.