What the store knows about you
Every time you install an app from the App Store or Google Play, a permanent record is created in your account. The app name, the date, the device. It doesn't matter if you delete it the next day. The record persists. Forever.
Anyone with access to your family account can see which apps you've installed. Your partner. Your parents. Your children. A colleague you share a business plan with. It's a history that cannot be erased and that you don't control.
A privacy app that leaves a trace isn't private
Think about it for a moment. A messaging app that promises confidentiality, but appears in your purchase history, has already broken that promise before you send your first message. It doesn't matter that the messages are encrypted if someone can see you installed it.
There are situations where the mere fact of using an app already says too much. A dissident in a country where communications are monitored. A journalist working undercover. A citizen who simply wants to speak freely with a family member living outside their country. It's not paranoia. It's everyday reality for millions of people around the world.
How it works without a store
Solo2 is a web application. You can use it in two ways. First: directly in a browser tab, like any website. Second: by installing it on your home screen, where it behaves like a native app — with its own icon, notifications and all. In both cases, it doesn't go through any store.
Installing it means adding it to your home screen from the browser. On iPhone, it's a button in Safari's share menu. On Android, the browser offers it directly. One step. Less than a minute. One important detail: your vault — where your messages, files and contacts live — is created inside the browser or installed app where you first sign up. If you sign up in the installed app, your vault lives there. If you sign up in a browser tab, it lives in that tab. They are separate spaces. That's why we recommend installing it first and creating your account afterwards.
What doesn't get recorded
By not going through the store, there's no record in your Apple or Google account. It doesn't appear in your purchase history. It's not associated with your credit card or family account. No external system knows you have it.
If you ever decide to delete Solo2, it disappears completely. The icon, the browser data, your local vault. Nothing remains on any server, in any record, in any account. As if it never existed.
It's not an inconvenience. It's the design.
When someone asks 'why aren't you in the App Store?', the answer is simple: because being in the store would leave a trace that contradicts what we promise. It's not a technical limitation. It's a principled decision. Privacy begins before you send your first message.