While perusing /r/jailbreak this past week, I happened upon a new and somewhat interesting release by Redditor /u/Smart-Ad-8635 called MySign that strives to be a convenient on-device sideloading platform for iPhones and iPads.
Sideloading involves installing third-party .ipa files on your device as a working app, completely circumventing the App Store in the process. In most cases, this involves using your Apple ID with a free developer account to ‘sign’ whatever app you’re trying to sideload, and it will need to be re-signed every so often – typically 7 days.
There’s no shortage of sideloading utilities in the wild today, with AltStore and Sideloadly being some of the most prominent and well-known options. MySign doesn’t yet support core sideloading capabilities in version 1.0 despite being labeled as an “IPA Sideloader,” but we still see potential in what the developer is doing.
At this point in time, MySign is nothing other than a large and centralized database of repositories that users can browse to find apps they want to sideload. As you can see in the screenshot examples above, you can view repositories, find apps from those repositories, and easily download their .ipa files to sideload later.
Of course, since you can’t sideload directly through MySign yet, you’ll have to use something else to sideload the .ipa file you find. In my case, I have a device with TrollStore installed on it, so MySign is useful to be as a repository browser in its current form. I can then open any .ipa file I download in TrollStore to perma-sign it, which makes this a convenient tool for anyone thinking about using it like I just mentioned.
Many comments in the /r/jailbreak thread have echoed the same principle I’ve stated above, that it seems odd for an application advertised as an “IPA Sideloader” to lack the core sideloading functionality. But according to the developer, they want to introduce sideloading capabilities in a future update, citing the difficulty of finding good documentation that explains how to implement the feature.
Having said that, it’s unclear how long implementing sideloading will take for MySign given that this appears to be a major challenge for the developer, but some commenters have already started rattling off ideas that the developer says they’ll add in a future update.
While MySign may not be a true sideloading utility as of version 1.0, I will say it’s a beautifully made repository browser and a convenient centralized place to find sideloadable applications for your iPhone or iPad, whether it’s jailbroken or not.
If you’re interested in giving MySign a try in its current state, then you can head over to the /r/jailbreak release thread to find the download link.
Do you see the same potential that I do in MySign? Are there any features (besides Sideloading) that you’d like to see in a future update? Let us know in the comments section down below.