Frequently Asked Questions
The questions teams evaluating Unveily ask most often.
What is Unveily, and how does it turn a web app into a native app?
- Unveily is a HybridApp SDK that turns an existing web app into native Android and iOS apps without rewriting code. Your web content runs inside a native app, and native features like camera, push notifications, and biometric authentication are available to your web code through a single JavaScript API, window.unveilyBridge. The result is a real native app you publish to the App Store and Google Play.
Do I need to rewrite my code?
- No. You use your existing web app as-is. You point the WebView at your own domain and add your license key and Firebase configuration. You only add unveilyBridge calls in your web code when you want to use a native feature.
Does it support both iOS and Android?
- Yes. Android (7.0 / API 24+) and iOS are supported with the same feature set. You build Android with Android Studio/Gradle and iOS with Xcode, and the same web app behaves identically on both platforms.
What native features can I use?
- Camera & photo gallery, push notifications, GPS location, biometric authentication (Face ID / fingerprint), QR/barcode scanning, social login (Google, Apple, Kakao, Naver, Line, Meta), in-app purchase, offline caching, secure storage, deep links, and an accessibility panel (TTS/STT). Which features are available depends on your subscription plan.
What is IAP (in-app purchase)?
- IAP (in-app purchase) is the store-based payment method for selling digital goods or subscriptions inside an app — Google Play Billing on Android and StoreKit 2 on iOS. The SDK on the Unveily Pro plan handles this purchase flow, while the separate IAP API product verifies purchase receipts server-side to filter out forged or tampered purchases.
Will a WebView app pass App Store and Google Play review?
- Yes, it can. WebView apps are often rejected as 'just wrapping a website,' but with Unveily the native capabilities are fixed at build time, and stating this in your review notes leads to approval. Our 'App Review Tips' document provides the exact wording and shows how to submit your native feature list and config.json to reviewers.
What are the plans and pricing, and how do they differ?
- Monthly: IAP API $49, Basic $69, Standard $119, Pro $199, with roughly 20% off on annual billing (subscription is per app). Basic covers core features like QR, push, camera, and location; Standard adds biometric auth and more social logins; Pro adds in-app purchase and Meta login.
How is the IAP API product different from the SDK plans?
- The SDK plans (Basic, Standard, Pro) are the SDK that turns your web app into a native app. The IAP API is a standalone API that only verifies Google/Apple in-app purchase receipts server-side, without the SDK. Choose the IAP API if you already have an app and just need receipt verification, or the SDK if you want to turn a web app into an app — the two are subscribed independently.
How do licensing and security work?
- License keys are HMAC-signed and verified server-side, and are checked automatically at app launch — if invalid, the app does not run. SSL certificate pinning, app integrity checks (Play Integrity, App Attest), root/jailbreak detection, and hardware-encrypted storage are applied automatically inside the SDK, so you don't write any security code yourself.
Apple and Google change iOS and Android every year — if updates lag, could my app break or be pulled from the stores?
- Unveily uses a WebView hybrid architecture, so the web content that makes up most of your app is insulated from OS version changes. Only the thin native bridge layer is affected by OS policy and permission changes, and Unveily maintains that layer centrally and ships updates to every customer. We run OS/policy reviews and security checks every month, and we continuously track Google Play's target API level deadlines so your updates are never rejected.
The SDK isn't open source — won't I get locked in or find it hard to move away later?
- Your app is a web app that you own; Unveily is the layer that wraps it natively. So leaving Unveily never means rebuilding from scratch — you simply re-wrap the same web app. The only protected piece is the core bridge binary; the shell layer — the main activity, configuration, menus, and any additional native modules — is yours to modify and extend. Native features are called only through the documented, standard window.unveilyBridge API, so you're never tied to a proprietary format.
Does Unveily use its own JavaScript framework instead of native languages like Kotlin and Swift?
- No. Unveily is a native Android (Kotlin) and iOS (Swift) SDK. You build your app in Android Studio and Xcode, and the shell — including the main activity — is native code you can edit. The JavaScript bridge (window.unveilyBridge) is a convenience layer for calling native features from your web content; it is not a runtime that replaces native. When you need to, you can add native modules in Kotlin or Swift yourself, so you are never tied to a specific language or a proprietary runtime.
How do I go from setup to actually publishing?
- 1) Download the SDK from the dashboard, 2) configure the WebView URL, license, and Firebase, 3) create a release build (Android AAB / iOS Archive), and 4) prepare your developer account, privacy policy, and store listing, then submit for review. Every step is documented in a beginner-friendly, step-by-step guide.