Preventing app removal on iOS | Hacker News Reader

Preventing app removal on iOS

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129 pointslogistra69 comments

Do I understand correctly that bleary eyed users were uninstalling the alarm rather than turning it off? (Because by design it's a hassle to turn it off, i.e. to ensure user stays awake for at least some length of time?) That's pretty funny.

My friend (an absolute bear of sleepiness) had a "wifi alarm clock" back in the day: he had to actually stumble over to his router (get a certain wifi signal level) for the alarm to switch off!

I used to have issues walking up during university, leaving my phone on the other side of the room, taking it and turning it off and falling asleep again without memory if it.

I got an alarm app that required solving math questions to do more than snooze. I had set it to three digit numbers +/- another. Worked great. Until I partied a bit too hard, and had to repeatedly snooze it, because even on the bus to university, I was too hungover to figure out the answer ;)

But in general, I was very grateful for the app.

There were not many such apps. Probably I used the same app about 10+ years ago. And also I was leaving my phone somewhere in the room where I must walk to, so I can actually get out of the bed. On many occasions if someone ring me I can answer and talk to them, assure them that I'm on my way and continue to sleep without even remembering. I listened to recordings, it is funny because I try to change my voice to sound like I am fully awake without even remembering. Btw, it turns out it was because of my unmanaged t2 diabetes. Now as it is under control, things are kind of normal.

> There were not many such apps. Probably I used the same app about 10+ years ago.

Funnily enough, I still use one with that feature, though I don’t think I’ve ever used that feature with it. It’s Gentle Alarm (originally a paid app), which requires unpacking the apk, editing the manifest, repacking, sideloading, and giving "draw over other apps" permission to use on modern Android. The developer long ago abandoned it, the website is not registered anymore, the support mail fails, and their Google account is deleted. But it’s by far the most featureful Alarm app I know, and if any Android update completely broke it, I’d debate staying on an older version.

>unmanaged t2 diabetes

Diabetes causes sleepwalking? Or mega tiredness?

It can do things like that. People who have diabetes have high blood glucose because their bodies are not actually using the sugar. If it gets bad enough it can actually feel like you're perpetually fasting despite having eaten. The energy is just uselessly circulating in the blood stream. Body thinks it's starving.

If this process continues the body starts producing ketones which acidify the blood which generally causes a lot of symptoms including depression of the nervous system.

Clever.

A student once made a whimsical motorized alarm clock that could drive around the bedroom, the idea being that the drowsy person would wake up in course of chasing it.

Another student made an alarm clock on the computer, which would require them to be alert enough to solve a differential equation.

> Another student made an alarm clock on the computer, which would require them to be alert enough to solve a differential equation.

That seems like it’d end badly after a rough night. Not only can you not keep sleeping, you can’t function enough to shut off the alarm so you just lie in bed without actually resting. Worst of all worlds. I love it!

It might've done long-term psychological damage to the student. They went on to become CEO for a very prominent company. :)

This is when the power plug comes out of the wall, the battery comes out, or the forced shut down happens.

> whimsical motorized alarm clock that could drive around the bedroom

It’s called “Clocky”: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clocky&oldid=1221...>

> Do I understand correctly that bleary eyed users were uninstalling the alarm rather than turning it off?

A legitimate reason to do this would be if you're on a red-eye flight somewhere, and your alarm goes off. You can't turn it off because your special object or QR code or whatever is in your checked bag. Your only option is to either turn off your phone or uninstall.

>turn off your phone

I was wondering about this, smartphones don't turn on when your alarm goes. (So you could just turn it off to bypass the "super alarm"?)

I have vague memories that older cell phones used to turn on when the alarm would ring, but I might be imagining it.

You're absolutely correct. At least Nokia Symbian phones had this feature.

I'm thinking about the old brick phones.

Yes, older phones would turn on to ring the alarm. At least the 3 I owned did, and they were all different brands.

Symbian was on a lot of different brands, so based on a sibling comment I’d say it was a Symbian feature.

Not really it was Siemens c35i era that have no problem with ringing alarm when switched off.

Ooh sleep like an android app is crazy good at this. You can turn it off, volume down, and try yo uninstall all you like. The darn thing WILL sound.

I like two of the puzzles it has : laugh out loud for some time, or should swear words

When I was in university, I experimented with an alarm app called "sleep as android". I had set it up so I had to scan an NFC tag to turn it off, and for that I used a spent subway ticket I kept in the kitchen.

It worked, until I figured out I could just "force stop" the app lol.

There's nothing worse than having a roommate that sleeps through their alarm that can be heard every where with no escaping it.

I have been both people in that situation and in both cases we agreed that since the alarm had been set for a reason, a water spray bottle was a perfectly acceptable response once the alarm had been going off for a while.

I also had alarm clock problems in uni. My solution was a Raspberry Pi, a piezoelectric buzzer, and an ultrasonic distance sensor pointed at the bed.

The buzzer would ring until the distance sensor could see the opposite wall, and restart if I went back to bed. As a bonus, it took a few measurements during the night to track sleep quality.

Unfortunately the whole thing was running from a finicky breadboard and needed frequent calibration.

Is there any malware exploiting this feature? I can imagine "can never be uninstalled" would be a desirable quality.

Especially if the flag doesn't expire, a bad actor could upload a flashlight app with this requirement, let the 20% or whatever tech savvy users balk at the permission, then update later to constantly serve ads or spy or whatever to the remaining 80%, who are now unable to uninstall.

Alternatively, a standard skinner-box inspired mobile game that refuses to uninstall after you've become addicted and traded the ability to uninstall for 500 PremiumBucks or whatever.

I'm legitimately surprised this is a permission that exists outside of the root user

You can always disable screen time permission and uninstall it. Also apps must get a special permission for using this API from Apple, if that’s any consolation.

I'd assume that's why there is a separate review process to gain entitlement to this API, no?

(Don't know how this works outside of the App Store, which is an interesting question.)

It seems like this could have some awful unintended consequences... e.g. you setup an alarm that can only be deactivated by scanning a QR code in the next room to force yourself out of bed, but forget to disable it on a business trip- and it goes off during an important early morning meeting and cannot be silenced as you aren't home.

I suspect this is almost always not a great solution to this problem. When I was a young adult I used aggressive alarm measures to get out of bed on time, such as having a very loud alarm clock on the far end of the room, where I had to actually get out of bed to silence it.

I discovered realized needing to do this was caused by a number of fixable health/lifestyle issues: going to bed too late, not getting enough daylight and exercise to sync my circadian rhythm correctly, too much screen time and bright lights before bed, too much coffee late in the day, etc. Nowadays I go to bed by ~8pm everyday, fall asleep quickly, and am up early. I haven't needed an alarm even for important very early events in almost a decade.

>and it goes off during an important early morning meeting and cannot be silenced as you aren't home

Couldn't you just forcefully turn the phone off? https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/iph8903c3ee6/ios

I have an alarm clock like this and still use it almost daily. The one that I use has an alternate dismissal method for anything fixed to a certain location. (Barcodes, etc.)

My sleep has gotten consistent enough over the years that I could probably get by without it, but it did help significantly with building the habits in the first place.

What would it matter if it’s a QR alarm clock or a regular alarm clock?

If you forget to disable either, the result is the the same.

I do agree with your other observations, and done the same to regulate my sleep to not need an alarm.

Just for the record: if you need this type of app, what you really need is a change of sleeping habits. Notably, you need to sleep more.

Maybe we need to work on creating a society where we are not forced to constantly wake up super early and then spend the entire day working...

If you need to sleep more, but need to get up at a specific time, you could…

Sometimes there are forces outside of your control, that you can't.

Whether it's family obligations or online university courses or whatever else.

we need something that disables all mobile phones across the world between 10 pm and 7 am on every timezone

Never could I have imagined users wanting apps to have more control of them, but here we are with a pretty compelling use case for not letting them remove an app. Neat

"since users cannot exit from the app to the home screen while the alarm is going off."

i hope they can dial 911 or hit the link to security cams.

You can always mash the power button 5 times

i hope it works that way

I like the idea of apps and components being able to have wide ranges of privileges and those being communicated to the user. I like what the author is doing and everything I don’t like about it - the unfairness of Apple’s gatekeeping and the lack of involvement of the user - is from Apple.

It makes me think of this article I recently read about web components as machines. Perhaps it’s only loosely related, but I feel like it’s worth the tradeoff for the system to create the illusion of components being in charge, even though everything goes through the system, whether it be a web server, a web page, or an operating system. https://www.abeautifulsite.net/posts/component-machines/

What this app attempts to do is to make the alarm be a little bit more like clocky which could do what it did because it was a physical machine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clocky

I had something like that nearly 10 years ago on my Android. I had to walk to my kitchen and scan a QR code on my fridge.

Really effective!

When I didn’t power off the phone.

But... then how do you delete it if you actually want it gone?

Surely there is a workaround, right?

As stated in the article, that flag is only flipped while the alarm is going off. Also the feature in general is opt-in, and you have to be approved by apple for that feature.

Thanks. Somehow I missed that it is only enabled while the alarm is going off. I did see that it was opt-in and needed approval. But then I was worried about opting in.

Okay, not so bad as I initially worried:

> The key is using Screen Time API of iOS.

> After getting approval from the user, the developer can set a flag to deny app removal.

> This feature must be opt-in. To enable the flag, you should explicitly get approval from the user.

but also, like, it only runs in certain conditions it sounds like here.

Can this line of code be always running? What if the app launches itself as a background process?

For a feature I just learned about so many questions, but it's Apple in their store so hedges betting it isn't as dangerous as it sounds. But perks your ears up

By design, apps run in background on iOS only as the system permits. Mostly they don't, except for a limited time in response to notifications, and in some other such sharply circumscribed situations.

I strongly doubt an app asserting this flag would pass review without giving the user a way to opt freely back out in the app's settings.

That goes double for the flag being entitlement-gated, one social reason for which requirement would be that it structurally signals a need for closer review. (I don't have an inside source at Apple, but my experience of their review process prompts the inference.)

The intent is to offer a user the option to strengthen a precommitment, not to offer an app dev the option to permanently infest a device. You can play games in app review, but only up to a point. Trying something like that seems like a good way to get deservedly permabanned.

Granted, I still wouldn't use the app, because I don't need it. But if I did, I'd feel pretty OK about enabling that feature. I might expect it to annoy me enough and aid me so little I'd turn it off again, but I'd see no need whatsoever to worry about being stuck with it.

What I'm wondering is, why would any app need to actually prevent uninstallation (and thus violate a fundamental right of the user to control their device), when it seems what such app makers would want is to prevent closing the app / escaping to the home screen.

How many people actually decide to uninstall an alarm app as it's going off?

Presumably enough to make it worth Apple's while to implement the option under an umbrella entitlement over tools that may help support perhaps flagging self-discipline. Presumably too, it was worth the app dev's while to go through the effort and process of implementing the assertion. I have some mild doubts about the fundamental efficacy of such an approach, but its motivation seems clear enough.

For any more than that you're asking quite the wrong person, I'm afraid. For one, I don't intuitively understand the use case; the way this works for me is that I set my phone to play reveille when I need to wake up, and when it does, I do. That makes convenient use of some early training which is all well and good for me personally, but it leaves me little able to speak to the concerns of those for whom nothing so simple can serve.

You can still uninstall the app after you go to Settings > Screen Time and then remove permissions for the app.

Once you know, it’s easy to do.

Most people don’t know, so this probably does what the author is intending.

Even if you do know the object of the exercise is more "add extra steps" so half awake brain is less likely to manage it without you waking up enough to curse and get up anyway.

Then again, back on my N900 half awake brain once managed to pop a root shell, ps | grep, and kill -9 the alarm clock app without me having any memory of it (the shell was still open when I woke up naturally some time later or I'd never have known what happened).

So this is a real thing? As long as your app qualifies for that entitlement, you can do this?

Also, what about force-quitting the app? Couldn't users just do that?

While this solves app installation, does this prevent users from killing the app, or even easier, just restarting the device?

Neat hack, but there's zero chance their app actually gets approval to use that API.

It got, about a month ago: https://apps.apple.com/se/app/superalarm-alarm-clock-sleep/i...

v2.5.1

Love how confidently incorrect some people can be.

did you read the article? author says you get approval from Apple for your use case then it is kosher.

i tried an app like this at some point, the one where you had to solve a puzzle.

I was just terrified that one day I'd set the wrong alarm and have it blaring during a university lecture when I couldn't turn it off.

Funny. Stallman wouldn't be happy to allow software which you cannot overrule.

It's really a matter of perspective. On the one hand, it's creating a situation where a user cannot uninstall the app. On the other hand, it's _allowing_ a user to prevent themselves from being able to uninstall the app under some circumstances. Whether this is ultimately a net increase or decrease in user freedom is an exercise in judgement.

IMO, it's a net decrease, because past owners shouldn't be able to bind future owners. The fact that it's your past self binding your future self, rather than the usual case of the manufacturer binding the end-user, is irrelevant.

But really, this isn't about overruling software, it's about overruling yourself.

Past self has implemented a mandate that future self get up at this time. Future self is a sleepy, lazy, point of sale that can't be trusted.

Sample size of 1. I used to "wake up" and turn off my alarm and have zero recollection of it. I got the most annoying mechanical clock and packed it in a box that I had to unpack before I could turn it off. It got louder as I removed the packaging. The prolonged activity in order to shut off the alarm is ultimately what helped me fully wake up.

This is a case of magnificent mindful past you overruling lazy negligent present you.

Stallman isn't allowed to be in the same room as an iPhone

I've tried this and the article misses a huge point. It looks like this prevents _every_ app on the phone from being uninstalled, not just the one declaring it.

> The most frequent complaint from users was that they could easily turn off alarms by simply removing the app.

Why would people do that? And why should we prevent this it if that is what they want. I don't understand.

People are not always completely lucid immediately upon their alarm clock going off. Have you ever woken up several hours late, only to find that your alarm clock did go off at the scheduled time, but you disabled it and resumed sleeping before fully waking up?

Well I am the kind who get out of bed, go to pee and shower. I hate when my partner is using snooze or set up multiple alarms, it feels like torture to me.

However here we mention people uninstalling the app instead of hitting snooze or disabling it. It sounds weird to me.

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