Is there a way to reliably wake up an app once in X minutes/hours

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Created Aug ’20

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I've watches the WWDC sessions and read the docs.
It appears that there is absolutely no way to guarantee that an app will wake up and do background work at regular intervals.

Is that the case? How are security tools such as MDM, MTD, EDR etc work, if they can't regularly sweep the device for signs of jailbreak and other policy violation?

With this approach, how can iOS be recommended as a secure enterprise platform at all? Or there are other means to ensure that a security scan of the device can be taken at necessary intervals?

Thanks!

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Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Aug ’20

It appears that there is absolutely no way to guarantee that an app
will wake up and do background work at regular intervals.

That’s correct.

How are security tools such as MDM [supposed to work] work, if they
can't regularly sweep the device … ?

The MDM agent is built in to iOS and thus is not subject to the same constraints as third-party apps. As for third-party products, the fact that they can’t wake up regularly is irrelevant because the iOS sandbox prevents third-party products from seeing anything outside of their sandbox. Thus, there’s very little utility to this sort of on-device scanning.

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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
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Answer 2

malc OP

Sep ’20

Have you tried BGTaskScheduler?

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Answer 3

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Sep ’20

Have you tried BGTaskScheduler?

The Background Tasks framework supports two types of work:

BGProcessingTaskRequest lets you run a heavyweight task with a high latency, typically overnight.
BGAppRefreshTaskRequest lets you run a lightweight task throughout the day.

The latter might seem promising but you have to understand that it makes no guarantees about how often your task will be run. Indeed, if your app isn’t used by the user very much, your task may never be run. Hence my answer to UserNoName’s original question.

If you’d like to learn more about this stuff, an excellent place to start is WWDC 2020 Session 10063 Background execution demystified.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

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