Feather iOS

Feather is a free on-device iOS application manager and installer, utilizing certificates from the Apple Developer Program.   Feather iOS allows you to install and manage applications contained in a single app, using certificate pairs and various installation techniques to allow apps to install on your device. This is an…

Feather is a free on-device iOS application manager and installer, utilizing certificates from the Apple Developer Program.

 

Feather iOS allows you to install and manage applications contained in a single app, using certificate pairs and various installation techniques to allow apps to install on your device.

This is an entirely stock application that utilizes built-in features to accomplish this.

 

Features

• Install applications via idevice or using a server.
• Inspect and manage imported apps, certificates, and altstore sources.
• Globally configurable signing options, and even supports Adhoc signing.
• Advanced tweak support, using Ellekit for injection. Supports .deb and .dylib files.
• No tracking or analytics, ensuring user privacy.
• Of course, open source and free.

How does it work?

Feather is an e-signature tool similar to Esign, Sideloader, and Gbox. To begin, we require a validly signed IPA. We can achieve this with Zsign, using a provided IPA using a .p12 and .mobileprovision pair.

Install (Server)

• Use a locally hosted server to host the IPA files used for installation, as well as other assets such as icons.
  • On iOS 18, we need a few entitlements: Associated Domains, Custom Network Protocol, MDM Managed Associated Domains, Network Extensions
• Make sure to include valid https SSL certificates as the next URL requires a valid HTTPS connection, for us we use *.backloop.dev.
• We then use itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url= to attempt to initiate an install, by using UIApplication.open.

However, due to changes in iOS 18 regarding entitlements, we will need to provide an alternative method of installation. We have two options here, a way to install locally entirely using the local server (the one I have just shown) or use an external HTTPS server that serves as our middle man for our PLIST_URL, while having the files still local to us. 

• This time, let's not include HTTPS SSL certificates, rather have a plain insecure local server.
• Instead of locally hosting ourPLIST_URL, we use plistserver to host a server online specifically for retrieving it. This still requires a valid HTTPS connection.
• Now, to even initiate the install (due to lack of entitlements from the former) we need to trick iOS into opening the itms-services:// URL, we can do this by summoning a Safari webview to a locally hosted HTML page with a script to forcefully redirect us to that itms-services URL.

Since itms-services initiates the install automatically, we don't need to do anything extra after the process. Though what we do is monitor the streaming progress of the IPA being sent.

Install (Pairing)