Sideloader

The missing open-source iOS sideloader.

Sideloader is an application made to install third-party applications on iOS devices.

You can see it as an open-source replacement of Cydia Impactor.

Leave a star and a small tip if you feel like it! — more information at the end!

Current state

Currently, there is a cross-platform CLI, with most features working.

And there is a Linux frontend based on GTK 4. It was the priority since no real alternative existed before.

A Qt frontend is being made for Linux, Windows and macOS.

A SwiftUI macOS GUI could be made (I got no Mac to work on that, but all the scaffolding code is here, if someone wants to work on that).

I tried to make the code as readable as possible, if you struggle to understand anything I am here to help! I don't want this to finish unmaintained!

Usage

GTK

CLI

$ sideloader -h
Usage: sideloader [-d] [-h] <command> [<args>]

Available commands:
  app-id         Manage App IDs.
  cert           Manage certificates.
  install        Install an application on the device (renames the app, register
                 the identifier, sign and install automatically).
  sign           Sign an application bundle.
  team           Manage teams.
  tool           Run Sideloader's tools.
  version        Print the version.

Optional arguments:
  -d, --debug    Enable debug logging
  -h, --help     Show this help message and exit                                                                                                                                                                       

Table of Contents

• How to install
• How do I build it myself?
  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
  • Other distributions
• How it works?
• Features
• Notes on platform support
  • Linux
  • Windows
  • MacOS
• Acknowledgements and references
• If you like my software, consider starring or even better: sponsoring me :)

How to install

Currently, the only builds available can be downloaded through GitHub Actions.

CLI builds include builds for every supported operating system, and GTK+ builds have a GUI for Linux-based OSes.

When it will get a first release, there will probably be an easier download (not requiring an account) in the Release tab of this repo, and hopefully it will be packaged as a Flatpak (even if I currently don't see how to make it).

Dependencies (at runtime): libimobiledevice, libplist-2.X (I attempted to support both 2.2 and 2.3). OpenSSL is currently also needed, but I plan to remove that dependency as soon as possible (only networking is requiring it).

Note: On Windows, MSVC builds of those libraries are needed as sideloader is built with MSVC. It also implies you have to install Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable to run it, but you probably already have those installed. Put them then in the same folder as Sideloader and you'll be able to run it. (For libimobiledevice and libplist, take a look at libimobiledevice-win32, and for OpenSSL see this link)

How do I build it myself?

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed:

1. Install the dependencies: sudo zypper in gcc dmd dub libharfbuzz-gobject0 libadwaita libphobos2-0_* libimobiledevice-1_0-6 git
2. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/Dadoum/Sideloader
3. Enter its directory: cd Sideloader
4. Build Sideloader: dub build
5. Enter the bin directory: cd bin
6. Allow Sideloader to run as a program: chmod +x sideloader
7. Run Sideloader: ./sideloader

Other distributions:

Get a recent version ldc2 or dmd installed (an installation script is available on dlang.org). It is tested with D 2.104.2 (= LDC 1.34) but it will probably compile with older compilers. GNU D compiler won't compile that code though (the cryptography library makes use of SIMD instructions that cannot be compiled by GDC yet).

How it works?

It works by fetching an iOS development certificate as Xcode would do if you were developing your own iOS application¹ and use it to deploy a third party application.

It does not require any Mac or Windows computer, nor any Apple software to be installed to work. It is just requiring libimobiledevice and libplist.

It is still requiring you to have an Apple account (which will play the role of the app developer to Apple), you can use any account for that, don't need to use your actual Apple ID used with your phone (I recommend making a burner Apple account, see SideStore wiki to have easy ways to do that, or on Linux, I'd recommend installing Apple Music on Waydroid).

Your credentials are only ever sent to Apple servers, and you can easily verify this!
In general, never trust anyone to handle your credentials, even more if it is in a closed-source obfuscated application (as-if there were something to hide there ^^).

Features

• Sideload
• Sign IPAs
• Set-up SideStore's pairing file
• Manage App IDs and certificates for free developer accounts.
• iOS version range is unknown. 32-bit support is untested. Please report any issue here!!

Acknowledgements and references

• People on this thread: first cues on the authentication systems for both machines and accounts.
• All the people in the SideStore team: testing, help on the machine authentication.
• All the people in the AltStore team: help on the account auth, and 2FA (especially kabiroberai's code).
• zhlynn: for its code in zsign.
• indygreg: for its code in rcodesign.
• teryx: their article about code signature.
• Apple Music for Android libraries: giving the opportunity to make all of this work neatly!
• Apple's AuthKit and AuthKitWin: giving me the skeleton of the authentication requests directly.
• Probably a lot of people I missed!

If you like my software, consider starring or even better: sponsoring me :)

In late 2019, Cydia Impactor stopped working, and the underlying reason also affected some of my personal projects at the time. At this time, I decided to start the development of an alternative. I had no experience in reverse-engineering, or even just making complex request for authentication on a server. Making this project made me a better developer, but this was not easy to do.

While most Cydia Impactor alternatives benefited of some Apple software available on macOS or Windows, (and thus were able to hijack their libraries and reproduce their behaviour), Apple never released anything targeting the end-user on Linux.

I took 2 years to find a way to overcome the problem that encountered Cydia Impactor without resorting to reimplementing the full Windows API. I dedicated a lot of work on this software (alongside my studies).

That is why I am asking you - if you enjoyed my software and if you can afford it, to give me a small tip via GitHub Sponsors.

Footnotes

1. You may wonder if that would allow full iOS application development on Linux, and the answer is yes! You can compile a native iOS app on Linux with theos, and then package it into an ipa with PACKAGE_FORMAT = ipa to eventually install it with Sideloader on a real device (or maybe even an emulated one in the future!) and debug it (with idevicedebug or remote lldb). (TODO: add an option to add the entitlement for debugging) ↩