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Does iOS Have Sideloading Yet? No

Contents - "Sideloading" in the EU - 📱 What is "sideloading"? - 💙 What are benefits of sideloading? - 🔒 Is sideloading safe? - 🤔 What would it mean for iOS to "have" sideloading? - 💻 Do other devices support sideloading? - 🇪🇺 Which countries are legislating "sideloading"? - 🔓 How do I sideload unofficially on iOS? - ℹ️ Who made this website and why? - 💡 Can I suggest an improvement to this website? - 📚 See also - 🪵 Changelog and RSS feed "Sideloading" in the EU 😮 Wait, I thought the EU mandated that? The Digital Markets Act is a recent EU antitrust law with the stated goal of making digital markets "fairer and more contestable". Article 6(4) reads as follows: The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper.

Implementing advanced features such as sideloading in a way that prevents social engineering attacks convincing non-technical users to enable them is non-trivial, but definitely possible, and absolutely vital if we are to avoid redefining the modern "computer" as something entirely different. For the purposes of this website, an operating system supports sideloading if it provides some means for technically-inclined end users to permanently install native apps without prior approval from any company or organization, either free of charge, or for a reasonable one-time fee. It implements a cryptographically verified boot chain which ensures that neither the OS nor any of its components has been tampered with, mandatory full device encryption, and strict sandboxing for all third party code with no exceptions, among many other advanced defense-in-depth security features.

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