How to get your Bolt app to the App Store (No code required)

The World’s Largest Hackathon begins this Friday and in June there will be at least 100,000 new AI app projects created.

Creating an app is the fun part. Getting that app to the app store is the hard part.

Bolt.new is hosting the massive hackathon and if you haven’t tried their AI app generation tool then it’s well worth a look. You can prompt your way to a compelling MVP of an app. Some errors will attempt to trip you up but a lot of people are generating impressive MVP’s that are previewable on your phone with Expo Go.

This blog post is about getting those AI apps out of the Bolt sandbox and into the actual app store. The developers reading this post already know how painful that process can be. For the AI Builders out there - please know that Expo has made this infinitely easier but there are still a handful of steps you have to take before your Bolt app is “real”.

I’ll embed the tutorial video right here, and the steps from the video are all repeated in the copy below. Good luck!

Before we begin, make sure you have:

• An Apple Developer Account (sign up here)
• An Expo account (sign up here)

We’ll focus on iOS (App Store) deployment, but you can also deploy to Android later. We’re focusing on Apple because it’s simpler to deploy. If you can get your app to the app store then you’re ready to check out the Android guide.

Once you've created your app in Bolt.new you can start the deployment process by downloading the source code. This gives you the actual files you’ll use to configure and deploy your app.

Rename the project folder to match your app’s name — my example app is called HydroTrack .

You need a code editor and we recommend Cursor - but there are plenty others. The code editor is needed so that you can open a terminal and build your application code for real. Without getting too into the weeds - the code in Bolt is basically a rough draft. We need to get it into a terminal to build code that can be shared with Apple.

Next, install Node.js (choose the LTS version). This enables your computer to run JavaScript and install app dependencies. “Dependencies” is probably a foreign concept to a non-dev. It basically just means “the stuff your app is made of”. You can think of them like building blocks. And we need to get those building blocks installed in the terminal.

To confirm Node.js is installed, open Cursor’s Terminal and run:

You should see a version number. Then install the app’s dependencies by typing this command:

In this step you’re just naming your app and adding some basic information about it. This is like filling out a bit of paperwork when you visit the dentist. Luckily they don’t need much info.

Open app.json and:

• Set the name and slug (URL-safe name with no spaces).
• Confirm the version is set (e.g. 1.0.0).
• Optionally, update the icon path to point to your app's custom icon.
• Set the scheme to match your app name (e.g., hydrotrack).

Now things are starting to get real. This step is when you send the app to the Apple so that it can be tested.

In the terminal, type:

This command does a lot of heavy lifting (so that you don't have to):

• Builds your app
• Generates required certificates
• Submits it to Apple via App Store Connect

You are going to see a ton of copy in the terminal now and a lot of questions that you most likely won’t understand. That’s okay. Just say yes to everything it asks — it's designed to handle the hard parts for you. If you say no it will break the process.

Once done, you'll get an email to test your app using TestFlight.

It’s good to test your app before you officially submit it to the app store. You wouldn’t want to ship to the app store with typos…

To start testing follow these steps:

• Download the TestFlight app from the App Store
• Sign in with your Apple ID
• Click the link from your email to install your app

Want to invite others to test your app? Go to App Store Connect > My Apps > Your App > TestFlight > Internal or External Groups. You can invite up to 10,000 beta testers!

If you do test the app and find issues you’re going to need to go back to Cursor to fix those issues. And then run through all the previous steps again. Don’t forget to change the ‘version number’ of your app in the app.json!

Once your app is tested and it feels like a winner then it’s time to officially submit your app for review. Here’s how that should go:

• Go to App Store Connect
• Select your app and provide screenshots, description, keywords, and version info
• Select the build you want to submit
• Press Submit for Review

If Apple requests changes, don’t worry — it’s common. Make the updates in Cursor, increment your app version (e.g. from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1), and rerun:

You just took an AI-built mobile app from Bolt to production with Expo — no native code required.

We haven’t seen many AI developed mobile apps make it to the app store so we’d love to know when you get there. Send us a DM on Twitter or Bluesky with a link to the app and we’ll check it out. Maybe we can help you market the app with a guest blog post on our site!

And if you have more questions about building with Bolt or getting to the app store join our livestream to ask the Expo experts!