Blog ·
SideClick is coming to the app stores
An earlier version of this post explained why SideClick planned to ship outside the app stores. That plan has changed, and it changed for good reasons — so rather than quietly deleting the old argument, here is the new one, made just as plainly: SideClick will be distributed through each platform's app store, and nowhere else. The Microsoft Store on Windows, the Mac App Store on macOS, the App Store on iPhone and iPad, and Google Play on Android.
Why the stores won
- The store signs the app — every install is verified by the platform, with no security warning to click through and no checksum ritual to perform
- Updates arrive silently through the store, the way every other app on your machine updates
- One obvious, trusted place to find the app on every platform your practice uses
- For a clinical tool, install hygiene is security posture: nobody handling patient records should rehearse overriding OS warnings
The earlier concern — that a store stands between you and your clinical tool — is answered by architecture rather than by avoiding stores. SideClick is local-first: your records live in your database, on your machine, encrypted with keys only your practice holds, exportable in standard formats at any time. A store can host the app; it cannot hold your data, read a record, or stand between you and what you have already documented.
What does not change: your licence is not a store subscription
Nothing is bought inside any app store. Your practice registers and pays on sideclick.io, the licence key arrives by email, and the app — a free install from the store — is activated by that key. Licence verification is offline; a store outage, a policy change, or the store removing a listing can never lock a clinician out of a licensed install. The commercial relationship stays between your practice and us, on the terms of the licence you hold, not a platform's.
Platform by platform
- Windows — the full desktop practice app, from the Microsoft Store
- macOS — the same full desktop app, from the Mac App Store
- iPhone & iPad — the clinician companion (day sheet, notes, capture), coming to the App Store as a native app
- Android — the clinician companion, through Google Play
Listings are in progress and will not all land on the same day. While they roll out, registered practices receive current install instructions by email — registration on sideclick.io is, and remains, the front door. When your platform's listing goes live, existing installs carry straight across: same data, same licence, nothing to migrate.
The honest footnote
The old post described a code-signing bureaucracy that is genuinely hostile to a small company in South Africa. That problem did not disappear — the stores solve it, because the store signs what it distributes. We would rather change a distribution plan in public than train a single practitioner to click past a security warning. The product underneath is unchanged: local-first, end-to-end encrypted, on-device AI, and your data never hostage to anyone — including us, and including a store.