SwiftStore: an AI-native App Store alternative for the EU Work in progress
We're building SwiftStore, an alternative iOS app marketplace for the European Union. It runs on Apple's MarketplaceKit, and every app in it does its AI work on your iPhone instead of shipping your data off to a server.
Apps as fast as a swiftlet. The Apple App Store alternative for on-device AI.
Why an alternative marketplace, and why now
The EU's Digital Markets Act forced Apple to open iOS to other app marketplaces, at least inside the EU. The plumbing for that is a framework called MarketplaceKit: it installs, updates, and reinstalls apps for a store that isn't Apple's own. To use it you need a specific entitlement from Apple, and Apple does not hand those out freely.
During WWDC week this year I flew to Cupertino and sat down with the Apple team to walk through what we wanted to build. We now hold the MarketplaceKit entitlement. That was the gate I'd been worried about. With it, SwiftStore can distribute and install iOS apps to people in the EU without going through the App Store.
The focus: on-device AI
I didn't want to build another everything-store. SwiftStore has an opinion baked in: every app on it runs its AI model on the phone, not in the cloud. That buys you a few real things. Your data stays on the device, because there's no server in the middle collecting it. The apps keep working on a plane or a dead train connection, since nothing is waiting on the network. Downloads stay small, so they install fast even on one bar. And the battery lasts longer when the phone isn't talking to a server all day.
Made in & for the EU
SwiftStore is built in the EU, for the EU. The DMA is what made it legal to build at all, and I'd rather use that opening to run something small and picky than a catalogue of everything. Fewer apps means we can actually vet them, and it keeps the on-device AI ones easy to find.
Where we are
It's early. The store and its first apps are coming together at swiftstore.ai, with a handful already up: Focus Flow, Birch Notes, Fjord SSH. Right now we're onboarding more apps and smoothing out the install flow. If you're building an on-device AI app for iOS in the EU, or you just want to watch this happen, that's where to look.