Warning: iOS 8.3 blocks sideloading of app and game save data
I wish I’d heard about this a lot earlier, but it turns out Apple’s essentially blocked access to app folders in iOS 8.3. This means that unless a developer has specifically enabled file sharing, utilities such as iExplorer, iMazing and Phone View can no longer access the Documents and Library folders of any app you’ve installed on your device. And that means no saving game data and/or sideloading it across devices.
Right now, the only advice is to stick with (or downgrade back to) iOS 8.2, use a jailbroken device, or cross your fingers and hope one of the devs manages to work around this issue. Oh, and if you’re a game dev, now would be a really good time to consider iCloud game saves and/or allowing file sharing access to game-save data.
More the pity because a new emulator just dropped, called “homebrew indie games” that has a bunch of different old console emulators inside. It’s for ios8 only and there are no hooks for iTunes file sharing or cloud storage.
I don’t want to pirate or steal anything but it would be nice to run the occasional emulation of things I own.
I had little problem with being forced to update to ios 8.3 until of course, I found this out. I use an extremely wide variety of apps, and without the ability to simply access the files to back them up no matter the condition, especially since plenty of the apps will never even be updated by their developers, I will nearly never be able to save my progress or information. Oh, I really just want to revert back to iOS 7.1.1, but even though I backed up, I can’t revert because of Apple stopping the signing of the iPS all the way up until the current latest version, being 8.3. Wow, this is sad. I know I should have jailbroken that way I didn’t even consider the new update, but too late now. Apple, you make me want to revert to Android. And damn, do I hate Android.
Monica: Safeguarding data, for the time being at least, isn’t yet blocked — that can be done by ‘rescuing’ files from a local iTunes back-up via iExplorer. But putting data back on to a device is a major pain (sideload into one of the back-ups and then restore). One dev I know is trying to overcome the latest Apple security clampdown, but I’m not holding my breath for a usable solution.