Why We're Done With the App Stores

A few years ago, publishing an app felt like the obvious move. If you wanted people to use your tools, you put them in the App Store and Google Play, crossed your fingers, and hoped the reviewers liked what you built.

We've done that dance. And we're not doing it anymore.

It's not because we can't build native apps. We can. It's not because we don't want people to have easy access to honest money tools on their phones. We absolutely do. We're walking away because the app store model stopped being a distribution channel and turned into a chokepoint — one more set of gatekeepers standing between us and the people we serve.

It's a pain in the neck

First, the practical side. Getting an app approved is a project all on its own. Screenshots, policies, compliance checklists, age ratings, in-app purchase rules, review times, appeals, rejections for reasons that change depending on which reviewer you get. Every update means going back through the line and hoping nobody moved the goalposts.

We'd rather spend that energy building something useful than pleasing a reviewer who may not even understand what we're trying to do.

Limited features

The native toolkits look powerful on paper, but once you're inside the store fence, you find out what you're actually allowed to use. Push notifications are gated. Background services are restricted. Payments must go through their rails. Anything that smells like competing with the platform's own financial products gets extra scrutiny.

That's not freedom. That's a sandbox with an admission fee.

The rules keep changing

Today's approved feature is tomorrow's policy violation. We have watched honest projects — wallets, marketplaces, privacy tools — get pulled or buried because a platform decided, after years of operation, that they no longer fit the rules.

The rules aren't laws you can read and follow. They're terms of service rewritten by people who do not share our values, enforced unevenly, and applied retroactively whenever it suits the gatekeeper.

Gatekeepers tell us what we can and can't offer

This is the part that matters most. Honest money means voluntary exchange between productive people, without someone standing in the middle claiming a right to approve the transaction. App stores are the exact opposite of that model.

They decide whether we can offer a wallet. They decide whether we can tell users about TEXITcoin, ISK, or the Texas Stable Dollar. They decide whether a feature is "allowed" based on who it competes with or which regulator it might annoy.

We didn't get into this work to ask permission. Neither did the people counting on these tools.

We lose some native features, but usually we can work around them

Yes, a web app isn't identical to a native app. Push notifications, deep system integration, and some performance edges are harder to reproduce. But the gap is smaller than it used to be, and closing fast.

Progressive web apps can install to the home screen. Service workers handle offline access. Modern browsers support secure key storage, camera access, biometric prompts, and payments. For the things that still need native reach, we build lean wrappers — but the logic, the keys, and the choice stay with the user, not with Apple or Google.

On Android, the APK option gives us the best of both worlds

Android still lets users install software from outside the store. That means we can ship an APK directly, keep native capabilities where they matter, and skip the approval theater entirely. Users who want the store experience can grab it there. Users who want the unrestricted version can get it straight from us.

That choice is the whole point.

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We are building tools for honest money, sound commerce, and personal sovereignty. Those ideas don't fit neatly inside a walled garden run by companies that profit from keeping the walls high. So we're building on the open web, distributing directly, and letting people choose for themselves.

If you want to follow along, pull up honest.money in your browser. Add it to your home screen. It works. And nobody has to ask permission for you to use it.