在我自己的应用程序中启动iOS-App-Bundle

Question

I want to write an iOS-Security-App. I want to be able to launch another App inside it. So I have in mind to have the whole App-Bundle and manage the launch and its resources and so on, so that I know what happens inside the 3rd party App.

So in practice, my own App should just draw a small rectangle in which all happens, so that the users can see he is working inside my secure environment. I want to place the whole App-Bundle of another App inside my App-Folder and want to be able to start it like the user would have started it outside of my secure-app. That means that the other App IS the same process as my secure App, so that I have some control over it like loading resources etc. And I dont mean to start it via an URL, it should display normally inside my app.

I hope someone knows how to achieve that or even knows that that is impossible. At least I know that its possible on Android and since they both are Unix based I hope it is doable in iOS as well.

Cheers Dominik

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure there is no way of doing this in iOS. You can do inter app communications using URL schemes and UIDocumentInteractionControllers, and iOS8 will allow you to extend your app's functionality into other apps, but iOS won't let you execute and control other apps inside your app for security reasons.

Answer 2

You can do this with some MDM tools, but they require the encapsulated app to be compiled with support for wrapping and the encapsulated app is delivered via enterprise distribution, not the App Store.

You can't do this with arbitrary applications or with your app being delivered by the App Store.

Apple would probably argue that apps are already executing in a secure context on iOS.