Amore Blog

With Amore №1

2025-12-29T00:00:00Z

Hi friends,

This is the first issue of »With Amore«, which I plan to use to keep you in the loop about significant project milestones and product updates.

Since my blog post back in late November the project evolved into a fully-fledged Mac app that's able to take care of every step of distributing app updates to your users and already has a couple of developers using it.

Last week I introduced a new help page that hosts Amore's documentation and shows how to get started. It's a good way to get an overview of what Amore is currently capable of. I strive to make this one of the best documentations for a developer tool.

Let's dive into some of the things Amore can do for you today.

From Archiving to Releasing

To streamline the release process, Amore's cli offers a command to be used with Xcode' archive post-actions, which will automatically handle every part of the release process after you archived your project.

This includes:

Exporting the archive
Code signing your executable
Creating an installer DMG (optional)
Notarizing your app
Signing your app for the Sparkle updater
Creating a new appcast.xml
Uploading your app binary

Amore for New Apps

The help pages now include a Get Started article that describes how to configure a new app for distribution via Amore. The process consists of 3 easy steps:

Register app with Amore via drag and drop
Configure Sparkle in your project. (Amore can do parts of this automatically)
Publish your first release

I tested this with multiple developers now and the whole process takes around 10 minutes.

Amore for Existing Apps

Over the last month I did dozens of developer onboarding sessions and learned that developers with existing apps face different problems and would like to keep their existing Sparkle setups.

Most of these setups included distribution of updates via the developer's S3 bucket and some custom scripts to create notarized DMGs and upload the result to S3.

I am happy to report that Amore now supports the same convenience for apps distributed via S3 buckets. You will be able to use your own S3 bucket from any cloud provider to distribute updates. Only minimal configuration will be required. You won't need to change the source code of your app to get started with Amore.

Once setup, Amore can take care of the full release pipeline and you can even edit the appcast.xml right from inside Amore. This means you can tweak release notes or change settings like beta channel or phased rollouts without ever leaving Amore.

As a thank you for your early support, I offer you the sexy price of $69 per year instead of $99, which won't change, even when I raise subscription prices in the future. You can get it here.

What's Next?

Currently I am working on the public beta release of Amore and looking for a few developers who are interested in personal onboarding sessions. If that is something that interests you, please reply to this email to get in touch.

xoxo
Lucas

With Amore №2

2026-01-29T00:00:00Z

Hi friends,

This is the second issue of »With Amore«, which I plan to use to keep you in the loop about significant project milestones and product updates.

Since the first issue 4 weeks ago, I have been working closely with several developers to make Amore easier to use and to support more use cases. Almost every feature now has a dedicated help page on amore.computer which you can find right inside the app.

WhyFi

Last weekend my friend James Potter shared his weekend project WhyFi in a tweet, which shortly after went viral. All the attention encouraged him to package it up for distribution and start selling it for $10.

On the same day, he reached out to me asking if he could have early access. A few hours later he had hundreds of happy customers and confidently published WhyFi with Amore.

Through Amore, he already shipped half a dozen of over-the-air updates to improve WhyFi.

His success accomplishes my initial vision for this project, which was to help my friends and fellow developers to focus on what they are doing best: building great products instead of wrangling with tedious distribution flows.

Public Beta

After onboarding new developers to the self-managed S3 bucket feature and having the first viral app distributed via Amore, it's time to leave the early access phase and open the project for everyone who's interested to self-publish their Mac apps.

You can get started today by downloading Amore from here.

I recommend you use the Get Started with Amore guide, which includes a short video (3:35) that walks you through the steps of self-publishing your first app with Amore.

The option to get a personal onboarding still exists. Please reply to this email if you are interested or need help setting things up.

Amore+

For the time being Amore will be free to use for everyone who wants to get started publishing their Mac apps. To keep this project sustainable, the latest version of the app includes Amore+, which currently is a monthly/yearly subscription of $9.99/99.

The subscription currently unlocks:

Unlimited app and releases
Custom domains (when hosting on Amore)
The option to remove the »Built with amore.computer« watermark in the DMG image

Built with Amore

I want to use this opportunity to thank the early supporters of this project that taught me so much and helped shape Amore into the tool it is today. Their apps are all built with Amore in more ways than one.

Massimo Biolcati: iReal Pro
Naveen Naidu: Monologue
James Potter: WhyFi
Alberto Gallego: Picmal
Konstantin: Browski

What's Next?

A common theme with developers in onboarding calls has been confusion around some of Amore's features, like DMG creation, which felt a bit too magical. I am currently working on demystifying and better communicating what Amore is doing and exposing previously implicit behavior as explicit settings in the UI and documenting it.

After this work has been done, I want to focus on developer feedback and look into 2 areas more deeply. The first area is payments and licensing for apps, so developers can use Amore to earn money. The second one is to build pretty download pages for apps hosted on Amore and possibly have an index of apps to help developers get more attention for their projects.

xoxo
Lucas

How to Distribute a macOS App Outside the App Store

2026-02-18T00:00:00Z

If you're building a Mac app, distributing through the App Store isn't your only option. Many of the most popular Mac apps like ChatGPT, Firefox, Sketch, Sublime Text ship directly to users without ever going through App Review.

Here's why you might want to do the same, and exactly how to do it.

Why distribute outside the App Store?

The Mac App Store takes a 30% cut of every sale. That's significant, but it's not the only reason developers choose to self-publish:

No App Review delays. Ship on your own schedule, not Apple's.
Direct customer relationship. You own the relationship and the payment flow.
Full control. Use private APIs, kernel extensions, or system-level features that the App Store doesn't allow.
No sandboxing requirement. The App Store requires App Sandbox. Outside it, you choose the security model that fits your app.

The trade-off is that you need to handle a few things yourself: code signing, notarization, updates, and packaging. Let's walk through each.

What you need

Before distributing outside the App Store, you'll need:

An Apple Developer account ($99/year) — required for code signing certificates and notarization.
A Developer ID certificate — this is different from the App Store distribution certificate.
A way to notarize your app — Apple requires this so macOS doesn't show scary warnings to your users.
An update mechanism — your users need a way to get new versions.
A distribution format — typically a DMG installer.

Code signing and notarization

Every Mac app distributed outside the App Store must be signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple. Without this, macOS Gatekeeper will block your app or show a warning dialog that scares users away.

Notarization is Apple's automated check that your app is free of malware and has been properly signed. The process involves uploading your app to Apple's servers, waiting for approval (usually a few minutes), and then stapling the notarization ticket to your app.

You can do this manually with xcrun notarytool, or let Amore handle it automatically.

Over-the-air updates with Sparkle

Without the App Store, you need your own update mechanism so your users don’t have to download your app from your website again once you released a new version. Sparkle is the de facto standard for macOS app updates. It's been around for over a decade, is used by thousands of apps, and provides a familiar update experience for Mac users.

Sparkle works by checking an RSS-like feed (called an appcast.xml) for new versions. When an update is available, it downloads it, verifies the cryptographic signature, and installs it, all with a native macOS UI your users already recognize.

Setting up Sparkle involves adding the framework to your project, configuring your Info.plist with a feed URL and public key, and hosting the appcast somewhere. You can follow our step-by-step Sparkle setup guide.

Creating a DMG installer

A DMG (disk image) is the standard way to distribute Mac apps outside the App Store. Users download the DMG, open it, and drag your app to the Applications folder. It's simple and familiar.

A good DMG includes a custom background with a visual arrow pointing from your app icon to the Applications folder. The DMG itself should be code-signed and notarized so users don't see any warnings.

Creating DMGs manually with hdiutil and setting up the background and layout is tedious. Amore creates DMG installers automatically as part of the release process.

Putting it all together

Each piece — code signing, notarization, Sparkle updates, DMG creation — is well-documented individually. The challenge is wiring them all together into a reliable release workflow.

That's exactly what Amore does. It's a Mac app and CLI that handles the entire release pipeline:

Code-sign your app with your Developer ID
Notarize with Apple
Create a DMG installer
Sign the update for Sparkle
Generate the appcast.xml
Upload everything for distribution

You can do this through the GUI by dragging your app in, or with a single CLI command:

amore release --scheme Acme

Get started with Amore in under 5 minutes. It's free for open-source projects and has a free tier for everyone else.

With Amore №3

2026-03-01T00:00:00Z

Hi friends,

This is the third issue of »With Amore«, which I use to keep you in the loop about significant project milestones and product updates.

At the beginning of February, I focused on making the amore CLI more powerful and easier to use for humans and their agents. I also made significant progress towards a powerful licensing and payments system.

CLI

In short, the amore CLI reached feature parity with the Mac app, which means that everything you can do using the Amore app can now be done in the command line. This is especially useful for automation using scripts or coding agents.

One highlight is additions to the amore release command, which now allows you to release a new version of your app right from the project folder without the need for manually archiving and notarizing. The currently fastest way to publish new releases with Amore.

It's now also possible to let an agent complete the initial Sparkle and Amore setup for your app. The amore setup command registers new apps, and with amore config you or your agent can change the release settings of your app.

Tell your agent about the amore help command to get them started.

Learn More

Licensing & Payments

Another big focus in February was the Amore licensing and payments system, which will be publicly available in March. If you are interested, please reply to this email. Early developers get lasting, better conditions before the public release.

The licensing system consists of a secure Swift SDK called AmoreLicensing, a licensing server, a self-serve customer portal for your users, and a powerful API for 3rd-party payment providers.

Amore currently supports issuing new licenses via CLI, API, and Stripe webhooks. Other payment providers will be added in the future.

The user journey for your customers currently looks like this:

Optional: The user opens the Amore checkout link for your product, which will redirect to a pre-configured Stripe Checkout session.
The user purchases a Stripe product. Both one-time payments and subscriptions are supported.
The user gets redirected to an Amore-hosted success page with information about their purchase and freshly issued license key.
The user enters their license key in your app.
The license gets validated and your app activated.
Optional: The user can manage and revoke their license activations in the Amore customer portal by using their email address as an identifier.

You can modify the user journey by pre-issuing license keys or using the licensing API to build your own licensing solution.

Stripe as Merchant of Record

I decided to use Stripe as the first 3rd-party payment provider because they now offer to use Link as a Merchant of Record via Stripe Managed Payments. It's easy to set up and fully compatible with Amore. If you prefer to sell licenses directly via Stripe, you can do that too.

Amore itself is already using Stripe Managed Payments since November without any issues or complaints.

Built with Amore

Like last month, I want to thank early supporters and adopters of this project that helped shape Amore into the tool it is today. Here are some of the highlights of the 20 new apps that started relying on Amore since last month.

What's Next?

As the work on the licensing system is almost complete, I will focus on documentation and help articles to make it easier for new developers to get started.

I would like to personally onboard the first developers to AmoreLicensing. If you consider Amore as your licensing system, reply to this email to get in touch. I would love to talk to you.

xoxo
Lucas

With Amore №4

2026-05-13T00:00:00Z

Hi friends,

This is the fourth issue of »With Amore«, which I use to keep you in the loop about significant project milestones and product updates.

In March and April the focus was on the licensing & payments system, which got polished and is now publicly available. This is the biggest update since Amore was launched and marks the end of phase 2 outlined in the original essay about My Vision for macOS App Distribution.

Licensing & Payments

It was important to make the Amore licensing system approachable for indie hackers and hobbyists, which is why you can start to use the new Amore licensing system for free.

Only pay in months you earn over $1,000. Thereafter, it's 1.5% of your total monthly tracked revenue (MTR).

Learn More

Amore's licensing system includes unlimited access to:

Product checkout page
License key generation
Purchase/subscription success page with license key
Email delivery of license key
AmoreLicensing Swift SDK
License activation and validation server

To get started, all you need to do is integrate the AmoreLicensing SDK into your app and connect your Stripe account to Amore. If you prefer to learn from a working example, I put together Pomodoro, a small SwiftUI app that shows the full Sparkle + licensing setup end-to-end.

Agent Skill

Everything you can do within the Amore app, you can do via the command line. This includes the new licensing system and product configuration.

Because this is the only way some developers interact with Amore, we created a Claude Code plugin and agent skill you can use to interact with Amore with guidance from Amore's documentation.

Learn More

Built with Amore

Like last month, I want to thank early supporters and adopters of this project that helped shape Amore into the tool it is today. Here are some of the highlights of the ~50 new apps that started relying on Amore since March.

SlapMac

This one has gone quite viral since the end of March. You may have already heard about it. Tonino, the developer, describes his app as »Slap your MacBook. It screams back. That's it. That's the app.«

It's a fun little app that already got more than 90k downloads.

Markdown Preview

One of those apps you should install on every new Mac. It adds native support for Markdown previews to CMD + SPACE and includes a beautiful Markdown document reader. It's free and open-source. Go get it.

Doorry

Your Mac has more open ports than you think, and most apps never close the ones they used. Doorry lives in the menu bar and shows what's actually listening, with a kill button that works.

Pluk

An AI-native macOS database client for Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB & Convex. AI does the querying, you explore your data.

Coca

Keep your Mac from falling asleep with one click! Stay green in all your messengers.

Peek

This is a smaller project from my friend Matt. Peek lets you monitor your OpenAI API spending right in the menu bar, with a per-project breakdown in the dropdown. No browser tab, no dashboard – just the number you need.

What's Next?

As the work on the licensing system is complete, I will focus on documentation and help articles to make it easier for new developers to get started.

Because Amore now hosts over 100 apps, I was wondering if it could be interesting to have an opt-in app store-like directory of apps.

You choose some screenshots and a description and have a landing page you can share. It would include a download and optional payment link.

Especially useful for small apps you would rather not build a website for.

I would like to personally onboard the first developers to AmoreLicensing. If you consider Amore as your licensing system, reply to this email to get in touch. I would love to talk to you.

xoxo
Lucas

Amore Blog

With Amore №1

From Archiving to Releasing

Amore for New Apps

Amore for Existing Apps

Early Access Promo

What's Next?

With Amore №2

WhyFi

Public Beta

Amore+

Built with Amore

What's Next?

How to Distribute a macOS App Outside the App Store

Why distribute outside the App Store?

What you need

Code signing and notarization

Over-the-air updates with Sparkle

Creating a DMG installer

Putting it all together

With Amore №3

CLI

Licensing & Payments

Stripe as Merchant of Record

Built with Amore

What's Next?

With Amore №4

Licensing & Payments

Agent Skill

Built with Amore

What's Next?