How Appolar works
Appolar is a Shopify sales channel that compiles a native iOS and Android app directly from your store catalog and a visual config. There is no separate database to sync, no webhooks to wire, and no code to maintain.
The Shopify connection
When you install Appolar, it connects to your store as a Shopify sales channel and reads your product catalog, collections, and customer data through the Shopify Storefront API. All reads happen at runtime, directly from Shopify. Appolar does not duplicate or cache your catalog anywhere separately.
This means your inventory, pricing, metafields, and product variants stay perfectly in sync with your store. Update a product in Shopify and the app reflects it on the next fetch, with no action on your part.
There are no webhooks to configure. Appolar reads your catalog through the public Storefront API the same way a headless storefront would.
The React Native engine
The app your customers install is built on React Native and Expo, which compiles a single codebase to both iOS and Android. Appolar hosts and manages this engine on your behalf. You customize its appearance and layout through a config, not by touching any code.
Your app is compiled under your own Apple Developer and Google Play accounts using EAS (Expo Application Services). The resulting binary is yours: it carries your bundle ID, your store listing, and your customers.
Builder and config system
Every visual and structural decision in your app is driven by a JSON config stored in Appolar. This config holds two kinds of values:
- Theme tokens: brand color, font family, border radius, and spacing density. These flow through every screen automatically.
- Screen layouts: each screen is made up of ordered blocks (hero banner, product grid, collection row, and so on). You control which blocks appear and in what order.
The builder is the visual editor for this config. It is embedded in your Shopify admin sidebar and shows a live phone-frame preview that updates as you make changes. What you see in the preview is exactly what your customers see.
OTA updates
When a customer opens your app, the engine fetches the latest config from Appolar's servers. This means most visual changes go live the moment you save them in the builder, with no App Store or Play Store submission.
This covers color changes, font swaps, block reordering, layout edits, and any other config-driven change. You do not wait for review queues to update your storefront design.
What requires a new build
A small category of changes requires compiling and submitting a new binary. These are engine-level structural changes, not config changes, and they are rare in practice. Examples include: adding a new native capability (such as biometric login), updating to a new version of the core Expo SDK, or a significant React Native library upgrade.
Day-to-day merchant workflows, including restyling the app, reordering blocks, changing collections, and updating push notification templates, all go out over the air.
Data flow summary
From product catalog to customer purchase, the data moves in one direction through a short chain:
Checkout and payments
When a customer taps "Checkout" in the cart, the app hands off to Shopify's native checkout sheet. This is the same checkout your web customers use, including Apple Pay, Shop Pay, PayPal, and every payment method you have configured in Shopify.
Appolar never handles payment data. Your taxes, shipping zones, discount codes, and fulfillment rules stay exactly as they are in Shopify. Nothing about your order operations changes when you add a mobile app.
Your checkout, untouched. Apple Pay and Shop Pay buttons live inside Shopify's checkout sheet, not on the Appolar cart screen. One tap from "Checkout" and your customers are in the familiar Shopify flow.