How to ship and sell a paid desktop app outside the app stores (2026)

You built a desktop app — macOS, Windows, Linux, native or Tauri/Electron — and you want to sell it directly instead of handing 15–30% to Apple or Microsoft. Selling outside the stores means you keep the margin and own the customer relationship. It also means the plumbing the stores quietly handled is now yours: distribution, payments, licensing, updates, support. Here's the whole path, in roughly the order you'll hit it — with the licensing part (the one most people underestimate) covered properly. Why sell outside the app stores Margin. You keep 85–100% instead of giving up the store's cut. Control. Your own pricing, trials, upgrades, and refund policy — no review gatekeeping, no waiting on approval to ship a fix. The relationship. You get the customer's email and can actually support and re-sell to them. The tradeoff is that the things the store did invisibly — vouching for your binary, taking payment, enforcing the purchase — are now your job. This isn't a Mac thing. Windows devs sell direct constantly, Linux too, and a Tauri or Electron app ships to all three from one codebase. The work below applies across the board. 1. Distribution and updates Before anyone pays, they have to trust and install the thing. macOS: sign with a Developer ID certificate and notarize with Apple, or Gatekeeper will scare users off. Windows: an Authenticode code-signing certificate, ideally EV to build SmartScreen reputation faster. Linux: package as AppImage, .deb / .rpm , or Flatpak depending on your audience. Then updates, because the store won't push them for you: Sparkle (macOS), Squirrel/electron-updater (Electron), the Tauri updater , or your own endpoint. Decide this early — retrofitting auto-update onto a shipped app is miserable. 2. Getting paid Two real models: Stripe (you're the merchant). Lower fees, full control, your brand on the receipt. The catch: sales tax and EU VAT are your responsibility (handle it yourself or bolt on a tax service). Merchant of Record (Lemon Sque