Is it possible to get info on other installed iOS apps?

Question

Is it possible to read the contents of another application installed on an iPhone? What about from an extension or keyboard?

I'm trying to come up with something that 'checks' other apps to see if they have any deep links (like Twitter's Twitter://timeline that takes users straight to the timeline in the Twitter app).

1. Is there any smart way to check a given app for deep links?
2. Is it even possible to peek at another app's contents from within my app? I suspect no.
3. If no, what about making a keyboard or extension of some sort that I can access from an app like Twitter and see its contents, such as a URL deep link?

Answer 1

You don't have much options, you may use -canOpenURL: , but, since iOS9, must include special credentails listing all the custom schemes you want to check.

You can't read other app's contents on a non-rooted device unless this app is sharing a keychain (so it can exchange data via the shared keychain). The same thing goes with extensions.

iOS has some high bars on security, so, don't expect much or even, anything.

Something you may want is IntentKit . Also there are ideas around the web about standard url query format like MobileDeepLinking .