Sideloading apps has become a popular pastime for iPhone & iPad owners because it allows them to install apps that are otherwise restricted from being distributed on the App Store. Unfortunately, installing apps in this manner can be a double-edged sword because you’re limited to sideloading a certain number of apps with a free Apple developer account.
In an attempt to solve that problem, iOS developer Duy Tran Khanh has been working on a neat utility called LiveContainer that allows users to use an unlimited number of third-party apps. That’s because you’d be running apps without actually installing them – it’s essentially virtualization.
The developer describes LiveContainer to us as being similar to that of “Parallel Space,” an app-cloning utility for the Android platform. Users can effectively load an unlimited number of apps into the LiveContainer app, and then access those apps within a virtual environment.
According to Duy, instead of loading into the app’s user interface as a sideloaded instance would, the main executable redirects to the guest app’s executable – in other words, LiveContainer acts as the vehicle that allows the virtualized app to run.
Another thing worth noting is that when JIT is available, such as in the case of SideStore (which is the recommended way to install this utility per the developer), codesign can be bypassed entirely. This means you don’t even have to sign the apps before installing them to use them. If you aren’t using JIT, then the apps you load into LiveContainer will be signed with the same certificate used by it.
Also see: How to install and use SideStore to sideload apps on iOS 14 and later
As a result of an app running within an app, we should also note the limitations this presents. While you can use multiple sideloaded apps at the same time by switching between them freely in the App Switcher, one caveat to LiveContainer is that you can only use one app at a time. In other words, you can’t multitask between different apps in LiveContainer.
Another thing to be aware of is that not all apps will work with LiveContainer. A work-in-progress compatibility list is provided on the developer’s GitHub page for anyone interested in learning about potential app incompatibilities.
If you’re interested in giving LiveContainer a try, then you can acquire the sideloadable app file from the developer’s GitHub page. Such a tool isn’t really necessary if you’re using TrollStore to install apps since TrollStore as an exploit-based perma-signing utility doesn’t have any installation limits to begin with. The tool is primarily intended for sideloading utilities, with SideStore being the recommended one to use.
Do you think the LiveContainer utility is an interesting one? Let us know in the comments section down below.