@setapp.com

New year, new apps to fall for! This January, we added two gems to Setapp: 📌 Supercharge — to enhance your Mac experience and turn it into the multitasking machine you’ve always dreamed of. 📌 Paper — for seamless writing process and creative brainstorming. Explore these and more with Setapp — an all-in-one subscription, ready to supercharge your 2025. Setapp.com

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🌫️ When the Store Lights Dim for the Last Time

Setapp Mobile’s final chapter echoes the mood of Last Dance by LEISURE, capturing that soft, bittersweet fade‑out when something promising steps off the stage not in failure, but in quiet recognition that the ecosystem around it wasn’t ready to let it flourish; the app store’s shutdown becomes its own slow‑motion last dance — graceful, reflective, and full of the unrealized potential that lingers after the music stops.

🎶 📉⚖️📲🇪🇺💼🧩💸🔄🚪🌫️🚀🧭 🔊 Last Dance - Leisure

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European users are about to lose one of the earliest and most visible experiments born from the EU’s Digital Markets Act.

Setapp Mobile — MacPaw’s subscription‑based alternative app store — will shut down on 16 February 2026, marking the end of a short but influential chapter in Europe’s push for digital competition. The closure highlights both the promise and the growing pains of the DMA era.

📉 A Bold Experiment Cut Short

Setapp Mobile launched in September 2024 as one of the first real-world tests of the EU’s new rules forcing Apple to open iOS to alternative app stores. For €9.99 per month, users with an EU‑based Apple ID could access a curated library of productivity, finance, creativity, and utility apps — a model that stood apart from traditional per‑app purchases. But despite early enthusiasm, MacPaw announced that all mobile apps will be removed from the store by the sunset date, citing “still‑evolving and complex business terms” that no longer align with its model.

💸 Apple’s Fees Proved Too Heavy

The “complex business terms” refer to Apple’s revised EU fee structure, including the controversial Core Technology Fee — a €0.50 charge for every first annual install beyond one million. Instead of simplifying compliance with the DMA, Apple’s updated rules introduced new layers of cost and risk for developers. For a subscription‑based platform like Setapp, where installs can scale quickly, the economics became unsustainable.

🧭 Desktop Users Remain Unaffected

MacPaw clarified that Setapp Desktop, its long‑running macOS subscription service, will continue operating normally. Only the mobile store is being sunset. This distinction underscores how Apple’s mobile ecosystem — even under DMA pressure — remains far more restrictive and costly for alternative distribution models than macOS.

🚀 A Gap in the Market — and an Opportunity

Setapp Mobile’s closure is undeniably a setback for users who embraced the idea of a curated, subscription‑driven app ecosystem. Yet it also opens space for new competitors who may design models better suited to Apple’s evolving fee structure. The DMA is still reshaping the landscape, and the exit of one pioneer may encourage others to build more resilient, sustainable alternatives.

🔮 The Future of EU App Stores Is Still Being Written

Setapp Mobile’s short life illustrates the tension between regulatory ambition and platform‑level economics. But it also proves that demand exists for alternative app ecosystems — and that the EU’s push for competition is only beginning. As the market adjusts, the next generation of alternative app stores may emerge stronger, more adaptable, and better aligned with the realities of Apple’s rules.

#DigitalMarketsAct 📱 #EUInnovation 🇪🇺 #AppStoreReform 🚀 #TechEcosystem 💡 #DeveloperEconomy 🔧