I want to enable my app to launch when the USB connects. I imagine there are two approaches to this, the first having some sort of external monitoring process which is always running and checking for such an event, the second would be a process within the app itself.
Having spent the whole day on Google, I first thought I could use the ExternalAccessory.framework to monitor the USB port. However, the only examples I've seen is when the app is already running. Is there any process I can use that will allow me to add my app for launching when the iOS starts syncing?
Alternatively, is it possible to use ExternalAccessory for this purpose and I'm just going about it the wrong way?
Looking at the comments above, the comments by cmyr are indeed correct and as correctly pointed out by Larme, the only solution is to use MFi which can configure the USB device as a custom setting which will always prompt the iOS as a connection.
Related
I'm currently working on a kiosk type application that won't be distributed on the App Store. The device will sometimes need to switch applications to handle some other tasks, but in the case where a user doesn't manually switch back, I need my app to come to the foreground after a set amount of time has passed.
We don't have control over the other apps, so getting them to switch to ours after a timeout isn't possible.
I know this can't be done through official means, but I'm asking if anyone knows of a private API I could call from within a scheduled notification that will foreground my application.
I have a feeling that this cannot be done without a jailbreak due to the sandboxing nature of the apps, as in, there's no way to send a message to whatever service launches apps on the device. Although it should be possible, as the demo devices in the Apple stores are able to revert back to a demo "screensaver" app if left alone for a while. What are they doing to achieve this?
If there is a jailbreak hack for this to work or a config or something an MDM service could handle, I'd be happy to try that out.
Again, this is for a private application that will not be distributed on the App Store. The app will be placed on devices located throughout our building and running on our internal network.
Via Jailbreak you could look at something like AutoLaunch:
If you use a particular app that seems to crash here and there, then a new free jailbreak tweak called AutoLaunch could be your next best friend. It can automatically re-launch any app that crashes on your device so you don’t have to re-launch it yourself.
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/01/08/autolaunch/
Not sure how much control you'd have over wanting to launch regardless of whether it's crashed or not. You might be able to ask the author to provide the source-code or work with him to get your desired result.
UPDATE:
It's open source:
https://github.com/chenzhijie/autolaunch
Upon further inspection of the source it looks like it uses the following to launch the application after a crash:
int createSubProcessResult = fork();
if(createSubProcessResult == 0) {
execl("/usr/bin/open","open",[currentAppBundleId UTF8String],NULL);
}
I guess you could roll your own version of Autolaunch and have it wait/subscribe for a remove command that'll launch/switch different apps.
I made an app deployed internally at my company. It is placed outside conference rooms and allows the user to see if it's open, schedule room time, view other rooms, etc. Given its nature and use, the app is always the active one on the device and is placed into guided access mode to prevent passers-by from playing around with it. However, the update process is rather tedious since despite our MDM solution, we have to go around and take each device individually out of guided access mode in order for the app to be updated. I've been looking into supervised mode for each device (using the Apple Configurator tool), but I wanted to ask if there was anyone here with experience trying this who could point me in the right direction in case that idea doesn't bare fruit. Is there perhaps a way to trigger the app (and guided access) to close remotely and open, also remotely, once updated? Naturally, this would go against Apple's guidelines, but this app will never touch the app store, so any solution at all is feasible. I saw a few answers on this site from over two years ago saying it isn't possible, but perhaps something has changed to allow this possibility between then and now seeing as so much has changed around deployment in the past few years.
I would do something like that:
Have a device in supervised mode
Set Guided mode through configuration profile (rather than manually doing it). App Lock payload does that.
And when you need to upgrade the app:
Try to upgrade it without disabling guided mode. As I remember, you can install applications silently on a supervised device. So, there is a chance that it will upgrade it and restart it (because of Guided mode) after that.
If it won't restart the app on upgrade try following:
Remove App Lock profile
Upgrade app
Install App Lock profile again
This should work.
I want to write an iOS sample application which can launch itself whenever device is rebooted. Please share your thoughts and any pointers will be really helpful.
Setting VOIP in background modes seems to be one option.
I am NOT looking for a Jail break solution.
There is a way if you have access to MDM tools or the Apple Configurator, and are able to control the device and its' profile. For example, if you are the curator at a museum or you or a teacher and hand out iPads to students, you'll most certainly have this level of control; and since you're writing a sample application, I suppose this level of control is possible as well.
There is a feature known as Single App Mode (see page 17) that locks a device into a single app. According to the documentation, if the device is powered down, the specified app will launch at boot. (I don't have the setup to confirm this.)
Note that Single App Mode is not the same as guided access mode, though people do tend to get them confused.
So should you have access to the right tools your original intent may be possible.
There is really not much you can do to achieve such functionality. The most you can do is to provide background fetching to prepare your app for when user launches it explicitly.
I have never seen a single app that could launch itself for no reason.
Hope this can be useful.
Can't be done unless the device is jailbroken, and I can't help you with that.
To my knowledge, this is not possible. Your app does not have access to this level of system information.
What you could do is periodically send push-notifications with a payload that temporary allows you to access app functionality.
My app has a bug, which I am unable to replicate when it is run when plugged into the computer.
I see it three times a day and it is quite annoying.
Is there any way to capture the state of the app (when not connected to the computer) and see what's going on? Kind of like what XCode does when you use a breakpoint, but somehow send the data to it (or some order tool that I am unaware of) wirelessly.
UPDATE:
The app does not crash. It's just that certain UITableViewCells don't work as they should at certain times.
Try using Crashlytics its awesome for crashes. You should also use TestFlight which will give you live sessions/logs of your app. These both combined will tell you many things.
This is a strange one, I have a need to create an iOS app that runs in the background on an iOS device, but can not be visible on the Home screen of the device. The app may need to show up in Settings to configure a few options, but it mostly needs to run behind the scenes.
I do not need to publish this app on the app store, it is strictly an enterprise app for my company.
Does anyone know how this kind of behavior might be achieved? Configuration profiles? API's? etc?
Edit: Jailbreaking the device is not really an option for us. We have to keep the devices as they are.
Backgrounding
There are several methods to get permanent background execution:
a) Silent audio which is mentioned by JRG-Developer
b) Usage of beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler + turning location manager on/off (it will reset remaining time to 600 seconds)
Making app invisible
You can use SBAppTags in Info.plist (take a look at this: How to remove app icon programatically from jail broken iPhone app?)
It will make your icon not visible on Home screen.
I've no idea how you can tackle the not be visible on the home screen criteria, but there are certain services that are allowed to be run in the background continuously, notably:
Background Audio (even silent audio)
While this is indeed very hacky, short of jailbreaking the devices, this may be your best bet.
While it's unlikely / very difficult to get past the review process, in the event for some reason you do need to (attempt) to publish this app to the App Store, some apps are even available on the App Store which take advantage of this hack, such as PasteBot.
You should definitely read their write-up here about getting their app's Cut-and-Paste functionality to work while in the background:
http://tapbots.com/blog/pastebot/pastebot-music-in-background
Another out-of-the-box idea, why not use Android devices instead, which do support multitasking?
Two methods:
Jailbreak. A jailbroken iPhone is essentially a Mac and you can use all Mac UNIX programming tricks - spawn a daemon (you can even ask launchd to do that), or something. You can set up enteprise-wise Cydia source. Refer to saurik's website for a walkthrough and set up an experimental server using Ubuntu (which used apt too)
A non-jailbreak way may be possible, but it will depend on what your app is doing. You can try use enterprise-wise push notifications.
Given that this is impossible to do on non jailbroken phones, I'd suggest the following:
develop a directory app, or a phone list app, something that is specific to your company.
have it connect to a web service once a day to register the device ID (so you know the user has not deleted the app)
tell users they need to keep the app open at all times (and if a user's device does not register one day, send them an email asking them to launch the app).
Now you can send back whatever you want with the app. If they kill it, you'll know the next day when you have a script look at the logs.
If you think this is a terrible idea, it is, but its the best you are going to get on iOS right now.
EDIT: you could send a notification every day - say in the AM - to make sure the user opened the app if it wasn't running.
From my experince, this kind of behaviour cannot be achieved on iOS. When an app enters into background, it is active only for a small particular amount of time. After that, it goes into hybernate state. It stops working. So the behaviour you said can not be achieved without abusing iOS workflow. Thats why some call iOS's multitasking as not true multitasking. Only jailbreaking might help your case. That was for one case. The second one where the app cannot be seen on home screen is again, impossible. It has to be on springboard to run.