Your Lovable App Works. Here Are 7 Surprises Between You and the App Store.

Originally published on Medium.

Lovable app publishing, from the founder's side of the screen: what nobody tells you before you try to get your app onto iPhones and Android phones.

It's Sunday night. You've spent the weekend in Lovable, and the thing actually works. People can sign up. The dashboard loads. Your friend tried it on her phone and said, "Wait, you built this?"

So you do what feels like the obvious next step. You open your notes and write: Put it on the App Store this week.

This is the moment most Lovable founders are in when they find us. And almost all of them have the same experience over the next few days: a series of small surprises, each one reasonable on its own, that together turn "this week" into "this month".

Here they are, in the order you'll probably meet them, so none of them catch you off guard.

Full disclosure: we're LetsDeployIt, and getting AI-built apps into the stores is what we do every day. These are the surprises we watch founders run into, again and again.

Surprise 1: "Publish" didn't publish it where you think

Lovable has a big, friendly Publish button. You click it, and your app goes live at a web address. It feels like a launch.

But that's a website. It lives in a browser, not in the App Store or Google Play. There's no app to download, no icon on anyone's home screen and nothing to search for in the store.

The first surprise isn't a problem. It's a realization: Lovable built you a web app, and the stores only accept native apps.

What to do: treat your Lovable app as the product you'll turn into an app, not the app itself. Your web version keeps working the whole time.

Surprise 2: Wrapping it might get you rejected

The first fix everyone finds online is "wrap it": put your website inside an app shell and submit that. It sounds perfect. It's quick and cheap, and your web app doesn't change.

Then Apple replies with three words founders learn to dread: Guideline 4.2, Minimum Functionality.

Apple's view is simple. If your app is just your website in a frame, people could use the website. Wrapped apps scroll like a browser, handle the keyboard like a browser and feel like a browser, and reviewers notice within seconds.

What to do: either add real native features to the wrapper, like push notifications and native navigation, or convert the app to a true native app with React Native. Here's what reviewers look for.

Surprise 3: You need two developer accounts, and one of them asks hard questions

To publish, you need an Apple Developer account ($99 a year) and a Google Play developer account ($25 once). Easy enough, until you hit the first real decision: personal or organization account?

It sounds like paperwork. It quietly decides two big things. An organization account shows your company name in the store and needs a registered business and a D-U-N-S number, which can take days or weeks to get. And on Google Play, a personal account comes with surprise number 6.

What to do: open both accounts on day one, because verification takes time. If you have a company, seriously consider organization accounts.

Surprise 4: Your login screen is the problem

You didn't even think about the login screen. Lovable made it for you: email and password, plus a nice "Continue with Google" button.

Apple sees something else. Under Guideline 4.8, if your iPhone app offers Google login, it must also offer a private login option, and in practice that means Sign in with Apple. Lovable doesn't add it, because a website doesn't need it.

What to do: add a Sign in with Apple button, at least as big and as visible as your Google button. Apple only sends the person's name the first time they sign in, so save it right away.

Surprise 5: People can sign up but can't leave

Here's a rejection that surprises almost everyone: "Your app supports account creation but does not include an option to initiate account deletion."

Both Apple and Google require it. If people can create an account in your app, they must be able to delete it, and their data, from inside the app. Not by emailing you. Not by "deactivating" it. Actually deleting it.

Lovable adds sign-up and stops there.

What to do: add a Delete account option in settings that really removes the account and its data on the server. Google Play also wants a web page where people can request deletion without the app. Step-by-step fix.

Surprise 6: You need 12 strangers to use your app for two weeks

If your Google Play account is personal and was created after November 13, 2023, there's a rule you can't skip: before your app can go public, at least 12 testers must stay opted in to a closed test for 14 days in a row. Then you apply for production access, and Google reviews that too.

It's the surprise that hurts most, because it can't be rushed. You can fix code in an hour. You can't make 14 days pass faster.

And it's harder than it sounds. Testers forget to accept the invite. Someone uninstalls on day 6. Every drop below 12 delays your launch.

What to do: start the closed test as early as possible, invite 15 to 20 people instead of 12, and check the opted-in count in Play Console, not your invite list. Full guide to the closed test.

Surprise 7: Your Stripe checkout doesn't work the same way in the app

Your Lovable app takes payments with Stripe, and it works beautifully on the web. Then you learn that if you sell digital things inside your iPhone or Android app, like subscriptions, premium features or credits, the stores generally require their own in-app purchase systems.

Physical goods and real-world services can keep using Stripe. Digital content usually can't, and the rules have been changing in some regions, so check the current guidelines for where you sell.

What to do: decide early how payments will work in the app. It affects your pricing, because the stores take a commission, and it takes real time to set up.

The bonus surprise: the paperwork takes a full day

Once the app itself is ready, there's still the store listing: an app icon, screenshots for different screen sizes, a description, a privacy policy page, Apple's App Privacy answers, Google's Data safety form, age ratings and a demo account for the reviewer.

None of it is hard. All of it takes longer than you'd guess.

So what does "this week" really look like?

Here's the honest version for most Lovable apps:

• Week 1: open accounts, get a native build, add Sign in with Apple and account deletion, start the Google Play closed test.
• Week 2: finish the store listings, test on real phones, submit to Apple. Your iPhone app is often live by the end of it.
• Week 3: the closed test finishes, Google approves production access, and your Android app goes live.

About three weeks, when nothing goes wrong. A rejection or a slow account verification can add another.

That's not a reason to give up on "this week". It's a reason to start the slow parts today.

Your Lovable app publishing checklist

Before you submit anything, check you have:

1. A native build, not just your website in a frame.
2. Apple and Google developer accounts, verified.
3. Sign in with Apple, if you have Google login.
4. In-app account deletion, plus a web deletion page for Google Play.
5. A Google Play closed test with 15 to 20 testers, started as early as possible.
6. A plan for payments if you sell anything digital.
7. A privacy policy, store screenshots and a demo account for reviewers.

Our launch checklist has every requirement and cost in one place.

You don't have to find these out the hard way

Every surprise on this list has a known fix. The founders who struggle aren't the ones with bad apps. They're the ones who meet these surprises one at a time, after each rejection, instead of all at once, before they submit.

Now you've met them all.

If you'd rather skip the three weeks of learning, that's exactly what we do at LetsDeployIt. We convert your Lovable app into a native app, handle every item on this list and take it through both stores until it's approved. See how it works or our plans.

Which of these surprises did you hit first? Tell us in the comments. We read every one.