Run App in Background?

Questions
1

Hi, first off I just want to say this is truly amazing! I purchased my iPad 3 hours ago (honestly, I’ve never even used one) and came across this by complete chance. I’ve been coding for 15 years and I am completely in shock that this even exists! My followers have been patiently waiting a year for me to release my game dev network, and this is seriously going to prolong that :stuck_out_tongue:

Anywho, I was wondering if it was possible to create apps that run in the background. I use WhatPulse.com to tally my key presses/clicks and would like to create similar functionality on the iPad. I also want to create a Heat Map app, which shows you where you tap the most on the screen.

Possible?

2

Except for a very limited and specific set of functionality, iOS doesn’t allow apps to run in the background, so unfortunately what you are proposing will not be possible :frowning:

3

I agree with @toadkick. As far as I know, apple only allows apps to run in the background like that if they’re music apps or have to do with background downloads. There was a screen recorder that ran in the background and it actually worked, until apple found out and removed it.

4

Awe that sucks. If it’s an iOS limitation, I guess it’s not too big a deal :frowning: thanks!

5

Thanks for the kind words, @OMGCarlos.

The iOS background model is limited to a fixed number of tasks that must be requested by the app. All iOS apps are completely sandboxed — in memory as well — and can’t read what another app is doing, e.g. with the keyboard, even if they are running in the background at the time.

It would only be possible to tally the keyboard entry results if your app had ownership of the current text view being edited by the user. So it’s possible only within your own application.