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damus-io / damus

iOS nostr client
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Investigate sideloading (f/k/a It's funny to be controlled by app store) #487

Open qianbin opened 1 year ago

alltheseas commented 1 year ago

@tyiu I think OP author is suggesting sideloading iOS app capability. This possible?

tyiu commented 1 year ago

Not really. There's some that do this but they're janky.

A report came out this week from the US government suggesting that Apple allow sideloading. But not sure if that will become a reality and on what timeframe.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/apple-should-be-required-to-let-iphone-users-sideload-apps-biden-admin-says/

This GitHub issue is not really actionable.

JayBrown commented 1 year ago

You can use the AltStore to sideload… works just fine: https://altstore.io

Sideloaded apps are activated for 1 week, after which they need to be refreshed manually.

If you have an Apple developer code-signing certificate, you can use that for sideloading, resulting in much longer activations.

So it may be a good idea to add .ipa files to the Releases section for every update, so users can download the latest version and sideload, if Damus is banned in their country (like in China).

PS: sideloading will eventually be legal & mandatory for i[Pad]OS devices in the EU (alternate app stores etc.).

tyiu commented 1 year ago

That's what I meant by janky. But yeah, it's possible. Up to @jb55 on what he wants to do.

olheadinternet commented 1 year ago

this would be nice for many reasons... in addition to the international restrictions above

a lot of people holding onto TestFlight slots like they nft's actual beta testers could still give feedback here with alt store. If anything an ipa should be released the night before it's pushed to 10k in test flight so quick fixes can be caught.

I wouldn't hate having multiple instances on the same device. Specially when assisting new users.

a lot of people have iOS devices that can do this, but not all have developer accounts or a modern enough Mac to compile their own ipa. I'm running Ventura in the cloud and don't pay for a dedicated plan so I can edit plists in xcloud to get around compiling ipa files.