Feather iOS

<p>Feather is a free on-device iOS application manager and installer, utilizing certificates from the Apple Developer Program.</p>
<p> </p>
<p dir="auto">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.</p>
<p dir="auto">This is an entirely stock application that utilizes built-in…

<p>Feather is a free on-device iOS application manager and installer, utilizing certificates from the Apple Developer Program.</p>
<p> </p>
<p dir="auto">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.</p>
<p dir="auto">This is an entirely stock application that utilizes built-in features to accomplish this.</p>
<p dir="auto" align="center"> </p>

Features

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

How does it work?

<p dir="auto">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.</p>

Install (Server)

<ul dir="auto">
<li>Use a locally hosted server to host the IPA files used for installation, as well as other assets such as icons.
<ul dir="auto">
<li>On iOS 18, we need a few entitlements: Associated Domains, Custom Network Protocol, MDM Managed Associated Domains, Network Extensions</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Make sure to include valid https SSL certificates as the next URL requires a valid HTTPS connection, for us we use *.backloop.dev.</li>
<li>We then use itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url= to attempt to initiate an install, by using UIApplication.open.</li>
</ul>
<p dir="auto">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. </p>
<ul dir="auto">
<li>This time, let's not include HTTPS SSL certificates, rather have a plain insecure local server.</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>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.</li>
</ul>
<p dir="auto">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.</p>

Install (Pairing)