As you may know, might have heard, possibly noticed, the PhoneGap Developer App and some similar apps were removed from the Apple iOS App Store. Apple has decided to more strictly interpret their own App Store Review Guidelines. Admittedly, we are usually more vocal with information and updates; Personally I had hoped this would all be resolved by now. Unfortunately it is not.
Note: this only affects the iOS App store, Android users can still download the PhoneGap developer app from the Google Play Store.
Enough about that, I want to talk solutions. While we will continue to work to get the app back in the store, we also know that there are a great many developers out there who depend on the app. So let’s talk work-around!
What you may not have known about the PhoneGap Developer App, is that it is open source which means that anyone can go and build it themselves. In fact, it is also a PhoneGap app, which means that you don’t even need to build it yourself; you can use PhoneGap Build.
Just in case you like your turtles when they reach all the way down … the PhoneGap Developer App is not only a PhoneGap app, it was developed using the PhoneGap Developer App.
- Go to https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-app-developer and give it a star, because you know, some people consider that a sign of a successful project, some teams get rewarded for stars, but mostly it just tells the developers that you like what they are doing.
2. Fork it.
3. Edit the file phonegap-app-developer/config.xml and change the name and id to whatever you like, and commit it.
4. Head over to PhoneGap Build ( https://build.phonegap.com/apps ) and create a new app.
Note: You will need to sign up if you haven’t already. You will also need to follow the signing steps for iOS. Signing is explained in detail here: http://docs.phonegap.com/phonegap-build/signing/ios/
5. Enter your github url and click ‘Pull from .git repository’.
6. When it’s done, click the iOS tab, and select your signing key.
7. Click the Rebuild button, and give it a minute. When it’s done, grab your phone and open your favorite QR code reader, and open the url to your app.
Congratulations! You have built the developer app for yourself.
We know this solution isn’t perfect, some of the issues include:
- You have to be a registered Apple developer.
- All devices that the app is installed on must be provisioned for the developer account/keys.
- You have to do the above steps yourself …
Watch this space for updates, and please post any questions, comments or issues you have with getting this to work.
