Get list of installed apps on iPhone

Question

Is there a way (some API) to get the list of installed apps on an iPhone device.

While searching for similar questions, I found some thing related to url registration, but I think there must be some API to do this, as I don't want to do any thing with the app, I just want the list.

Answer 1

You could do this by using the following:

 Class LSApplicationWorkspace_class = objc_getClass("LSApplicationWorkspace");
 SEL selector = NSSelectorFromString(@"defaultWorkspace");

 NSObject* workspace = [LSApplicationWorkspace_class performSelector:selector];

 SEL selectorALL = NSSelectorFromString(@"allApplications");

 NSMutableArray *Allapps = [workspace performSelector:selectorALL];

 NSLog(@"apps: %@", Allapps);

And then by accessing each element and splitting it you can get your app name, and even the Bundle Identifier, too.

Answer 2

for non jailbroken device, we can use third party framework which is called "ihaspp", also its free and apple accepted. Also they given good documentation how to integrate and how to use. May be this would be helpful to you. Good luck!!

https://github.com/danielamitay/iHasApp

Answer 3

No, apps are sandboxed and Apple-accepted APIs do not include anything that would let you do that.

You can, however, test whether a certain app is installed:

• if the app is known to handle URLs of a certain type
• by using [[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"thisapp://foo"]

You can get a list of apps and URL schemes from here.

Answer 4

For jailbroken devices you can use next snipped of code:

-(void)appInstalledList
{
 static NSString* const path = @"/private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installation.plist";

NSDictionary *cacheDict = nil;
BOOL isDir = NO;
if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath: path isDirectory: &isDir] && !isDir) 
{
    cacheDict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile: path];

    NSDictionary *system = [cacheDict objectForKey: @"System"]; // First check all system (jailbroken) apps
    for (NSString *key in system)
    {
        NSLog(@"%@",key);
    }
    NSDictionary *user = [cacheDict objectForKey: @"User"]; // Then all the user (App Store /var/mobile/Applications) apps

    for (NSString *key in user)
    {
        NSLog(@"%@",key);
    }
    return;
}
NSLog(@"can not find installed app plist");                   
}