I'm planning to code an application for the times when someone's iphone is lost or stolen. So it needs to tell the location of the phone via GPS, but in case it's stolen, it wouldn't be a good idea to ask the thief to turn on the GPS. So I'd like to know if there is a possibility of turning on/off the GPS without prompting the user. Thanks.
I'm not sure if you have seen this or not: Apple's 'find my iPhone'
Either way, The app would have to be running, with GPS enabled, for the service to work correctly. Any half-wit thief would know to quit such an application
You can't bypass the prompt completely. But it won't show up forever, if the user allows the app to use location data. Once the user allows this access twice, the app won't prompt any more. For an app like the one you describe, the user would have to do this first, and only then could future access proceed without a prompt.
There's still the pointer icon at the top of the screen when location services is active. There's no way around that, though.
Related
I am thinking to make my own app like Find My iPhone app . But I am confused that whether apple allow developers to have access to play with the security or is there such Apple API's that can help us to include features as in the above app. Any suggestions?
Well I just can't comment because of low reputation. But people must give a reason to down-grade a question. Its quite a valid question.
Creating an app like this is semi possible. Due to the fact that you are not allowed to keep running in the background, except for certain special cases. Such as Music or a guidance app (navigation apps)
Your app can register to receive updates from the GPS location and process them.
The problem is it will use your gps all the time.
The find my iphone app is a combination of wifi location/sim card location/gps location.
It uses a combination of all these items which it has to keep track of your location as close as possible. Now back to your question, the fact that you cannot keep running in the background, will mean the app needs to stay open all the time (open I mean running, not necessarily onscreen). Not like the application from apple itself, which of course is allowed to go outside these developer restrictions.
The APIs exist for you to create the main functionality of this app. Core Location and APNS
When use A is looking for the location of user B, A would tell a server that it needs user B's location.
A push notification could fire up user B's app, at which point...
User B's location services would kick in, in the background,
Send this information to your server
Then update user A with another push notification.
I have a CLLocationManager contained in a singleton and I have added around a dozen regions to monitor. I am successfully notified of boundary crossings when the app is in the foreground/background. However, when I force quit the app, the location icon disappears and I am not getting any callbacks.
As far as I can see, this is intended functionality as of iOS7. Here is a reply I found to a similar question, in this case involving significant location change: https://devforums.apple.com/message/882691#882691:
If a user swipes up in the app switcher then the OS will not launch the app unless explicitly told to do so by the user. So no, SLC will not be launching the app, nor will silent notifications. The only thing that will launch the app at that point is the user tapping the icon. The intention here is that the user has expressed their choice of not having that app running any more for any reason, so we honor that.
In this situation, there's really nothing that you can do. The next time the user launches the app you can let them know that some of the data may be missing, although you really cannot tell whether there's missing data or not (i.e. you might have been killed by the OS in the background and the user may not have moved thereby not triggering any SLC notifications). My suggestion would be to gather the data you can within the policies of the OS and if the user has manually killed the app then respect that wish and don't do anything.
By all means, feel free to file a bug report if this change in behavior winds up causing problems for you or (especially) confusion for your users.
My app has to run for a long time (also) in the background, due to Location Services.
When a certain condition is met the app has to move to the foreground.
I was able to run my app in the background and bring it to the front manually.
Reading up on this issue I got confused on how to move my app to the foreground by code.
It has to be in an if statement but what to do from here?
No do not think this is possible. You will be able to spawn a UILocalNotification to show application state to the user, but it is my understanding that iOS prevents you from making your app take focus.
you can't do that without user interaction. You can present a UILocalNotification
-- you can't even be sure iOS leaves it running though!
on a jailbroken phone I guess it is possible
This is clearly not possible, as it would be a mess if any app could just take over control at any point in time. As mentioned, you have to post a notification, and then it is up to the user if he or she wants to launch the app. If you notification states a good reason why they should launch your app, they might very well do it :-) And remember, don't mix up the user's needs with your/your app's needs.
I am developing an iPhone app, that will not be distributed on AppStores. I have tried to search for private api but no luck. When the user tries to quit the app, I want to prompt the user to enter the correct password so as to enable him to exit the app. How can I achieve this? Thanks in advance.
Cheers!!
It sounds like you need something similar to iOS "Kiosk Mode" as described in this answer:
Put an iPhone or iPad into 'Store Demo' mode
Using that description in conjunction with the following steps might achieve precisely what you want:
Have a "Quit" button
Show a password dialogue when it is pressed
If it was correct, read an out of bounds array location (or do whatever) to crash the app
With that config installed you'd get stuck in whatever app you launch next, though.
You can't! You'll have to password protect the launch instead.
If you want to prevent the user from quitting your app, you'll need to physically cover the home button. This isn't a bad solution if your goal is to do something like a kiosk or a point of sale system, where you probably want to mount an iPad in a secure enclosure to prevent tampering or theft anyway. There are quite a few such enclosures on the market in a variety of styles.
For a normal app, though, there's really no solution -- iOS isn't designed for whatever you're trying to do.
The only way I could think to do what you want (which is to prevent access to certain apps) would be to replace the SpringBoard application (this is the method used by Apple itself in the App store models of the iPhone and iPad that restrict the things you can do on the devices). #owenfi pointed at one way to do that without jailbreaking, but in general it is limited: you won't be able to "exit" the app, you will basically just be able to run a single app.
I have a requirement in my iPhone app that I know when somebody running the same app is close by.
I'm thinking that GameKit using Bluetooth would let me do that. GPS location is not precise enough in this particular case.
However, if the user closes the app then the function won't work anymore. Even under iOS4, the task switching will close down the BonJour services so I can't have the app run in the background.
Seems to me I can only have this function if the user leaves the app up and running. Would you agree? Or is there a different approach I can take?
People are very concerned with privacy, so they would naturally expect such privacy invading functionality to be switched off when they close down the application.
If they choose to have this feature enabled, then it's a different matter. Then they expect that somebody else may locate them.
You might however consider implementing some sort of opt-in offline service, where the latest gps position is stored on a server including a timestamp. When somebody else (with the app running) moves within a certain distance of this location while it's still "fresh", then you send off a notification to the first device. That way the user would be notified that somebody may be close, and can then switch on their own device.