The source of this problem is that it costs $99/year + the churn of having to keep up with the latest ios api updates to have an app for iphones. Which kills the normal free software that would have filled this role. As well as the fact that the subscription apps can pay for adverts to sit at the top of the search results.

Once governments force Apple to allow sideloading we should get some kind of f-droid for ios which only lists open source user respecting apps.

Only applies to Android. Apple make it deliberately expensive to publish apps and deliberately annoying to run your own apps locally (have to refresh every 7 days).