Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Comments
I'm thinking that indexing these apps not available anymore is interesting. In those app lists people have around.
For instance, right now I can recall three apps I have on my device which I guess you cannot download or purchase. Alchemy, Organ+ and Rebirth. At least Rebirth still runs on my current ios version
It was me, just a few posts back in the thread. Still works on Windows so I imagine it can still work on Macs with certain third party software too.
Does this Windows iTunes version copy your App IPA versions from your device to your Windows PC, not via downloading from the AppStore?
Ah, I see what you mean. The way I back up is downloading the app via iTunes 12.5.5.5. but some apps like ifunbox can extract the ipa from the device. Maybe itunes can do this too, but I don't use it like that.
I am unsure as to the safety of the latest version of iFunbox, my virus software flags it for containing malware, but iMazing just downloads from the AppStore, as far as know and have tested. I presume iCloud will only install Apps in my purchase list, as others and myself included know that purchase history has been altered, removing Apps previously purchased. I honestly think Apple, in removing the ability to install Apps via iTunes, purchased at certain periods, also by removing your own ability to install them, from a person backup, may be in breach of consumer law, territory dependant.
I'm using Bitdefender which is pretty robust and doesn't seem to have a problem with iFunbox, although I can't seem to get it to extract an app from my ipad right now, pretty sure install works though as I did that recently.
Yum. IPA. 🍺
Sorry, please continue...
@Carnbot, from reading any device iOS 9 onwards, it seems it’s impossible to copy the App from a device to a computer, because what is retained on the device is only a partial install (App thinning), that is solely specific to that device, any available via the AppStore are full package installs for various different devices, my advice going forward would be to download to your computer as many Apps as you possibly can and certainly ones of importance, if you can, maybe even different versions of the same App.
I agree, as a precaution I always download all apps to my computer so I can reinstall, sometimes keeping different versions depending on the app.
I have iTunes set to automatically download all app purchases. (which you can set in the download prefs)
Yes, for me lesson learned, thanks for your advice and help.
@Carnbot : I just want to confirm that with iFunbox and iOS 12, you are able to extract an ipa from a non-jail broken iDevice?
Unfortunately I can't confirm that I can extract apps with ifunbox...looks like that functionality isn't working, but I can still download ipa files from itunes and then install them via ifunbox.
As far as I can tell on Mac, recent iDevices can't connect with the last version of iTunes that backed up the .ipa files directly. I just tried to connect my iPad 6th Gen to the iTunes on a Mac with OS X.6.8 (and I think the last iTunes version on Mac that backs up the ipas directly) and iTunes won't connect to the iPad.
Is it possible to try and install an even older version of iTunes on a Mac?
Did a quick search and seems like it’s not difficult to do that, but I’ve never tried on a Mac.
For me I’m not connecting my device to iTunes at all. I’m just downloading the ipas from my Apple account with iTunes and using ifunbox as the installer.
I'd setup an external disk with a less restrictive version of OSX (extreme would be 10.6, but from 10.7 on it features the current memory and security paradigm).
Set the external drive as startup and after boot immediately lock out spotlight from your regular main drive by setting it to private (or unmount the disk).
You probably need an USB image to boot, as the current OS may refuse to install an older version. Hold the option key at startup and the Mac will display available boot devices.
I think it would be easier to setup the older version of OSX into a virtual machine like VMware Fusion and make iTunes save those ipa’s to a shared folder
You can still download Rebirth. Works fine on my iPad Pro though only the standard mod looks good
You need an older iTunes version for this, right?
Yeah I think so, I haven't tried the most recent version. I've got 12.5.5.5 installed.
I think you’re going to need a version prior to iOS 9.0.2 as well as the older version of iTunes to create an IPA from a device because of App Thinning, https://www.appcoda.com/app-thinning/
Oh... ok... so they just removed the option to buy! This is better
Thanks
I see. I thought you were backing up and getting the ipa that way. It never occurred to me to download the app from iTunes. I was able to do that on the OS X.6.8 version of iTunes (version 11.4). The current versions of iTunes on Mac don't let you access the apps.
Now I have to test whether it is possible to actually install the ipa I downloaded
You don't need to be on MacOS 10.6.8 to get the iTunes that allows downloading apps to store them locally. After iTunes 12.7 came out and removed that functionality, Apple kept iTunes 12.6.5 available for business users who need to configure multiple devices and install local apps. You can get it here.
Three big caveats:
1- This won't help the OP as the functionality to pull the app off the device was removed long ago. This is simply a way to download apps and store them locally and then be able to install on your devices from the local copy.
2- iTunes 12.6.5 won't run on MacOS Mojave (10.14)
3- iTunes 12.6.5 won't work with the newest iOS devices (2018 and newer)
There is also the enterprise Apple Configurator but as you can see from the "glowing" reviews, it's not the most fun to work with.
Thanks for the information.
Does that mean won't run on Mojave or later or is it only Mojave that is a problem?
Can this be installed on a machine that has iTunes already without interfering with the recent iTunes version's functionality?
I believe it won’t work with any device running iOS 9.0.2 onwards.
Can't say with absolute certainty, but considering Apple is getting rid of iTunes, I think it's fair to assume that Mojave was the end of the line for iTunes 12.6.5
Unfortunately, you can only have one version of iTunes at a time. That said, I had no problems installing 12.7 then rolling back to 12.6.5; your data is safe.
It's not the iOS version (well, I haven't tried the iOS 13 beta...), it's the actual device. I'm running a 10.5" Pro with iOS 12 just fine on iTunes 12.6.5. However, when I tried out the new 11" Pro (with FaceID) I had to update iTunes to 12.7 (this was one extra reason why I retuned the 11" Pro). Reverting back to 12.6.5 was simple and issue-free.
So, it sounds like if one (as I do) uses iTunes to make local backups of a modern iDevice -- you don't want to do this on the Mac you use to make your backups -- but would want to install the old iTunes on another Mac. (Or, you could rename the 'real' iTunes, install the 12.6.5 version and create a user on your machine to run the old version for the sake of downloading the ipa files to archive).
Running on a separate computer is probably the easiest path. I'm not sure you can just rename iTunes and install the two versions. MacOS uses bundle IDs, not the user-facing name to ID apps.
If you only have one Mac, while it's somewhat tedious to install and re-install iTunes (there's the installation and a library re-build), I think that it wouldn't damage the backup of the newer device (and I'm assuming by "modern device" you mean something that requires iTunes 12.7 or higher). That said, I would backup your backup before trying!
Of course, having the .ipas is just one part. If you need to re-install, you'll need iFunBox or whatever as iTunes 12.6.5 won't work with your 2018-ish or newer device (basically anything released since the iPhone 8 and X) and 12.7 or higher don't handle .ipas.
<sigh> Apple...
You could also try working with the Apple Configurator...
As I just found out, you can do all this with iMazing
https://imazing.com/guides/how-to-manage-apps-without-itunes