iOS: Is there a way to know if the current user of iOS ever used my app

Question

I'm developing an iOS application and I'm searching for ways to find out if the current user of the iOS device ever in the past used my application. Idea here is to disable intro section of the app if the user has had the experience earlier.

I'm aware of the solution that stores UUID in the KeyChain of iOS device. But I'm not sure if UUID stored could persist across device factory reset and other devices owned by the user.

Answer 1

No.

You can get the UUID using [[UIDevice currentDevice] identifierForVendor] to track devices that have used your app (you would have to store these on an external database somewhere), but that would not help you for people that are doing a fresh install of the app on a new device.

Using the UUID would not help you with a new user installing the app on a second hand device where the app was used previously.

Users transferring their data from an old device to a new device would take all the settings with it (backup/restore), so it's not a problem in that situation.

The only way to do it reliably would be to use the Apple ID, but of course Apple don't make that available for privacy reasons.

Answer 2

You can use this third party library GBVersionTracking .

It gives you some interesting features about versions, launches, build etc...

You can play around with those information to create a logic in order to skip or not your intro.

Hope it will help.