Blackphone began courting app developers for its Silent Store, stating that it is “confident this will become a premier venue for discovery and distribution of privacy-conscious apps to enterprise and individual customers around the world”.

At launch, the store will only be available to devices using the company’s PrivatOS. It said that “in general your Android-compatible apps should work provided they have no hard dependencies on Google Play services”.

All apps will be subject to a vetting process, and Blackphone said that “not all apps submitted will be accepted. Our goal is to ensure that every app in Silent Store is transparent about what it does, takes no liberties with private information already on the device, and uses reasonable security-minded coding and implementation practices,” it wrote.

Initially, there will be no payment options for Silent Store, meaning that “your apps must be free to download and use”. Payment mechanisms will be added in future, although it has also said that “sketchy built-in advertising trackers” are verboten.

The store will be “going online soon”, the company said.