It only took 17 years, but the App Store is now accessible on the web. Apple launched the new interface on Monday, allowing you to browse, search, and share apps from a web browser.
The site lets you access all of Apple’s platform stores, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. You can view the full App Store entry, including screenshots, ratings and reviews, release notes, and more. You can also see various sections of the App Store, like the Games section or Arcade, as well as browse by category.
What you can’t do is install or update those apps on your devices. At least some of that is because there’s no link to your Apple account: instead, this is really just a catalog. If you’re browsing the App Store for the device you’re on, you can easily jump to the app you’re looking at in the actual App Store app.1 In other cases, the usual “Get” or “Buy” link has been replaced with a Share button.
As someone who’s written about apps for years, this does get rid of one longstanding frustration where you would put a link to an app in your story, but it would force you to open the App Store app to see all the details of the program. But it would be really nice if I could queue up apps to download on devices that aren’t in front of me, as other devices like game consoles let you do. Maybe in another 17 years.
- That sentence used “app” so many times that it has lost all meaning for me. ↩
