iPhone farm, I'm trying to automate a 3rd party ios app (YouTube, Instagram,reddit, Twitter, tiktok) on a real iPhone using Appium.

[Cyril O'Kon]

I haven't been able to find a single guide/tutorial to achieve this, but from the information I gathered, it seems to involve the following steps:

Extract the pre-installed app and decrypted it (using a tool such as Clutch)
Resign it with my development cert
I know I omitted lots of details in each step, but my question is, has anyone done this successfully and can confirm this is actually achievable? Or is there any other less involved ways to automate a 3rd party ios app using Appium?"

OR
install APP via IPA file and try to automate it after this by modifying the plist. This could be (in theory) done by some script, that you would provide the package, it would disassemble it, change the line in plist file and assemble it back together for all devices, you need.

HELP

 

[Lysanne Kulas]

Or is there any other less involved ways to automate a 3rd party ios app using Appium?"

On Android it's possible since apks can be easily unpacked and there's a plethora of tools like UiAutomator.

On iOS the story is different. I haven't been successful yet in automating an iOS device yet (I am too poor to have the new ones here lol).

An option you have instead is to use a tool like Sikuli.

RaiMan's SikuliX​

sikulix.com

What tools like appium and uiautomator do is that they hook up with GUI internals of the operating system and drive the interaction process (identifying elements, clicking them etc).

What sikuli instead does is it automates a desktop screen by "taking pictures" and then using image recognition to find the elements.

So what you can do is you can jailbrake your iOS device to install a VNC software and connect it to your desktop. Then you can click elements on your desktop screen with Sikuli which will automate the ui on the iOS device.

It's slow, but it's the only working workaround that I know.

 

[America Crist]

I Will use Sikulis, thanks

So I am guessing instagram and other social has a trust score system, and a sophisticated automation detection method that distinguishes manual and automation.

Do you thinks Sikulis cannot be detected?
Such automation can be detected when traffic is abnormal only?

 

[Grant Price]

Platforms don't really care about automation, what they do care about is how their private APIs are being (ab)used.

So they don't invest time into figuring and busting automation methods, there will be hundreds of ways to do that. What they do instead is behemently monitor usage patterns and activity and drop the banhammer on you if they think you are doing anything remotely sus.

So say you follow and unfollow a random page 100 times a day, you will get a ban because your activity is sus, not because you are using an automation tool to generate said activity.

You would have got the banhammer even if you did it manually.