I have a view containing 4 buttons:
Home
Lock
Volume up
Volume down
all I'm trying to make is that when you press one of these buttons, my app should do some communication with the device to simulate one of these buttons.
Example: If I click the home button exists within my app, is the same as I press home button in device.
This kind of thing is possible? jailbreak is necessary for this?
None of these functions are available to you if you want to get your app accepted into the App Store. For a while some apps accessed private API's in AVSystemController however it seems recently apps using this method are being rejected. (Although some apps still using the method seem to be left in the app store)
If you want to go down the jailbreak route you'll have to dig into private API's and the headers of the various frameworks.
Also just a note, Apple provides some sort of interface like this through their accessibility options.
To do what you are after would go against Apple Review Guidelines so it will get your app rejected under
2.5 - Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected
You are not allowed to take the functionality of the Home and Lock away from these buttons and put it within your application.
Though I will not say it is impossible to do if your app is for jailbroken devices. Such as to exit your app you can do exit(0); though I still wouldn't recommend it as it makes it look as though your app has crashed when it hasn't.
For the volume control you can do this with the use of MPVolumeView I would recommend having a read of the Apple Documentation and this question iOS: Accessing device hardware audio volume control
Related
IOS 12 introduced some basic screen time settings.
Is there any way to view or change these settings programatically from inside an app or from an external MDM?
Specifically, I would like to be able to change the time limits, the downtime schedule, and/or the list of allowed apps. Ideally from the parent device but from the child device or from an MDM would be acceptable too.
I want a solution like an existing application did.(https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id981066103 Parental Control - Screen Time)
I'm really interested in this as well, and can share my findings with you here:
There is no possible way to use the screen time / API at the time of writing. Since apps use .entitlements now, private APIs are out of the question as well.
Apple is most likely thinking about releasing a screen time API, since the feature is added in the iOS Simulator.
Apple is rejecting and removing screen time apps for no apparent reason right now.
There is one solution for now though: use MDM. The mobile device management system does not allow you to change the screen time settings on the device, but you do have control over what apps are allowed to be opened. Bind this to some date/time logic and you have a simplified version of the screen time app. The same function can also be used to track the time an app has been opened.
The app you mentioned uses the above MDM solution as well. (Actually, all apps do)
Is there any possibility to know which apps are in the background (Those apps that appear when you double tap home button)?
For 3rd party apps, no. Not in a reliable, App Store safe, future proof way. Think of your app as siloed, unaware of what else is running, and you'll be pretty much in the mindset Apple want (and try to technically enforce).
For other apps developed by you, you can use shared containers to write load/unload data each time one of your apps opens/closes, and work out what's currently running.
This is not possible on iOS with public api. There might be private api calls that do this, even though I don't think you will have access to them while running in the sandbox. This however might be possible on jailbroken devices, but you will not be able to submit to the app store with such api usage, unless you know how to hide that from apple.
Also please note that apps shown in the app switcher are not necessarily running. The app switcher shows every app that has been running in the past which the user didn't force-quit. If the user does not force quit an app, every app that has ever been launched is shown in the app switcher. If iOS decides to terminate an app because of memory needs, the app is still shown in the app switcher. This is one of the reasons why everyone should implement state restoration, as the user does not know whether an app is currently running or not!
I am building an album app. I want to set a photo in my own app as wallpaper. Is there some method available for doing so?
update:
I know there are already some similar questions posted. But they are out of time. So I am wondering if there is some method in iOS7 to implement so.
For apps going into the app store this isn't possible. Apps can't change anything outside of their environment this is because apps on iOS run in a sandboxed mode so they don't know anything about other apps that are on the device and can't affect the OS directly.
To actually do it you would probably need to use some private API so your app would get rejected under:
2.5 Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected
but I suspect that they would actually reject it under:
10.4 Apps that create alternate desktop/home screen environments or simulate multi-App widget experiences will be rejected
As you are directly altering the home screen.
Note : I don't want to submit this app to app store.
What i want to achieve :
I want simple app with one view having two button Lock and Unlock.
Lock - This button will lock device. Only this app's screen will show nothing else will be accessible even after restart same screen will show up. Home button, gestures will get disabled similar to single app mode.
Unlock - This will unlock device and switch to normal behaviour of device.
iOS :
I want this for iOS 4.3 and above.
I have checked following solutions, but these don't match my requirements
Configuration profile
Lock-down iPhone/iPod/iPad so it can only run one app
But it is manual (reboot device, open app which you want to run in single app mode). I want to do it programmatically the way i mentioned above through my app.
Guided access (iOS 6 and above)
How to lock down user to Single App mode in iOS 6, Programmatically?
I want it do for all os and programatically.
Is there any way to do this ? As i don't wan't to submit it to app store is there any private api, some hack for springboard to achieve this ?
Thanks in advance !!
As I know in iOS 7 there is a new feature which allow to do exactly what you want.
However, it's only applicable for iOS 7 (and I believe it's only applicable to a supervised devices).
1) You will need to install restriction configuration profile with autonomousSingleAppModePermittedAppIDs key (take a look here)
This is one time step and a user will need to manually accept this configuration profile.
There is another option to use MDM to install it silently, but it could be an overkill for you.
2) You should use API:
UIAccessibilityRequestGuidedAccessSession (to lock/unlock)
It is defined here
3) And most beautility part. All of it is officially document. So, you can even submit it to AppStore.
P.S. Why do you care about 4.3 or 5? They have tiny market share by now. Most likely even iOS 6 has below 20% market share already.
Update 1
Potentially, you can try to use API which sends clicks and keys (search for GSEvent in iPhone-privateapi tag). May be using these API's you can do triple home to toggle accessibility on and off.
If this work, I think you should be able to cover iOS 6. I am not sure whether both this API and triple home click were available prior that.
It looks like this private API is unaccessible anymore in iOS 7. So, probably you can ignore this idea.
Just wanted to write on this even though this is old as i needed to implement a similar solution and i got it working. The steps for me as follows and a note here is that this involves MDM and other specific steps.
My requirement was as follows. Each of the iPad at different locations has a set of apps installed.For ease of it lets assume each Dept. has their own apps. Participants open a app related to their dept. to take a test, the APP automatically Locks the iPad to single-app Mode and at the end of the test, it will unlock it self.
Supervise the iPad/iphone using the Apple Configurator.
Install the MDM related files ( Each MDM has its own set of instructions, usually involves downloading a profile).
Every MDM has a option of Single APP Mode or MultipleAppMode. Select the second option and add the app IDs to the list. (A single APP mode works pretty well with MDM's but i did not want the app to be locked to a single APP all the time).
I used the UIAccessibilityRequestGuidedAccessSession api to lock unlock the device from single app mode.
http://bobxcode.blogspot.com/2015/12/programmatically-implement-single-app.html
Thanks,
Bob
In MDM configuration, There is an option
autonomousSingleAppModePermittedAppIDs
Optional. Supervised only. If present, allows apps
identified by the bundle IDs listed in the array to
autonomously enter Single App Mode.
Availability: Available only in iOS 7.0 and later.
But this needs Supervised Device mode.
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.