I have converted a Shiny app via shinylive::export and it works fine when accessed from a web server, and the app remains usable so long as it's loaded in the browser (even without an active internet connection, I assume).
But once the user closes the browser, to access the app again, they need to reload it from the web server.
Instead of having users access it from a web server each time they want to run the app, is there a way for them to download it once and start it up by running it locally?
It depends on which problem you try to solve, user being able to run the app
(i) locally without active internet connection or
(ii) without any local software installation.
For (i), you could provide the app as part of an R package which can be downloaded from CRAN or GitHub by the user to be installed locally (however, local R installation is required).
For (ii) shinylive is a good intermediate solution between shinyapps.io based hosting and setting up your own ShinyServer to host the app.