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AltStore – Alternative app store for non-jailbroken iOS devices.

AltStore is an alternative app store for non-jailbroken iOS devices.

AltStore is an iOS application that allows you to sideload other apps (.ipa files) onto your iOS device with just your Apple ID. AltStore resigns apps with your personal development certificate and sends them to a desktop app, AltServer, which installs the resigned apps back to your device using iTunes WiFi sync. To prevent apps from expiring, AltStore will also periodically refresh your apps in the background when on the same WiFi as AltServer.

For the initial release, I focused on building a solid foundation for distributing my own apps — primarily Delta, my all-in-one emulator for iOS. Now that Delta has been released, however, I’m beginning work on adding support for anyone to list and distribute their apps through AltStore (contributions welcome! slightly_smiling_face).

AltStore Features

  • Installs apps over WiFi using AltServer
  • Resigns and installs any app with your Apple ID
  • Refreshes apps periodically in the background to prevent them from expiring (when on same WiFi as AltServer)
  • Handles app updates directly through AltStore

Requirements

  • Xcode 11
  • iOS 12.2+ (AltStore)
  • macOS 10.14.4+ (AltServer)
  • Swift 5+

Why iOS 12.2+ and macOS 10.14.4+? Doing so allows me to distribute all AltStore apps without embedding Swift libraries inside them. This helps me afford bandwidth costs by reducing download sizes by roughly 30%, but also noticeably improves how long it takes to install/refresh apps with AltStore. If you’re compiling AltStore and/or AltServer yourself, however, you should be able to lower their deployment targets to iOS 12.0 and macOS 10.14.0, respectively, without any issues.

Project Overview

AltStore

AltStore is a just regular, sandboxed iOS application. The AltStore app target contains the vast majority of AltStore’s functionality, including all the logic for downloading and updating apps through AltStore. AltStore makes heavy use of standard iOS frameworks and technologies most iOS developers are familiar with, such as:

  • Core Data
  • Storyboards/Nibs
  • Auto Layout
  • Background App Refresh
  • Network.framework (new in iOS 12)

AltServer

AltServer is also just a regular, sandboxed macOS application. AltServer is significantly less complex than AltStore though, and for that reason consists of only a handful of files.

AltKit

AltKit is a shared framework that includes common code between AltStore and AltServer.

AltSign

AltSign is my internal framework used by both AltStore and AltServer to communicate with Apple’s servers and resign apps. For more info, check the AltSign repo.

Roxas

Roxas is my internal framework used across all my iOS projects, developed to simplify a variety of common tasks used in iOS development. For more info, check the Roxas repo.

AltStore on GitHub: https://github.com/rileytestut/AltStore
Platform: iOS
⭐️: 6.7К
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