Getting notification of iOS device usage in backgr

Question

Might be i am using a wrong title but i will try to explain here what i want.

In iOS i need to implement a functionality to get notify if the user is using their iOS device.

My app will be running in background using location services and i need to find out if the the user is using their device. It is doable as i have looked into this application which is sending notifications in background to the drivers who is suing their devices while driving.

https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/cellcontrol/id661169580?l=en&mt=8&ign-mpt=uo=2

So i need similar kind of functionality to find out if a user is using iOS device or not. If anyone of you can suggest me any approach then it would be great for me to start.

Thank you!

Note: I have tried to find out touch events in background but that is not possible as i have done some research on this.

Answer 1

You won't be able to receive touch events when the app is in background using public API's. However, you can do that with the help of mobileSubstrate library ( http://iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/MobileSubstrate - The MobileHooker component is the one that would be used). by hooking your process to the OS. As an example, the display recorder app in Cydia tracks global gestures while recording the screen. This will be a cydia tweak and you will need to jailbreak your device to do all that.

Coming to your specific use-case, the example app you cited should be using one of the exceptions for background applications mentioned in https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iphone/conceptual/iphoneosprogrammingguide/ManagingYourApplicationsFlow/ManagingYourApplicationsFlow.html (see the section - "Implementing Long-Running Background Tasks"), probably the one to receive updates from external accessories.