Just 24 hours after developers of the popular screen brightness app f.lux released a side-loaded version for iOS, Apple has told the developers that they are in violation of the company’s developer program agreement.
Since f.lux’s private APIs are not allowed in the App Store, the developers decided to allow users to directly download the app’s source code, taking advantage of the fact that Apple now lets anyone with an Apple ID load apps directly from Xcode to their iOS device.
Now, the developers have pulled the download link for the software, saying Apple reached out to say that the workaround is not kosher.
Apple has contacted us to say that the f.lux for iOS download (previously available on this page) is in violation of the Developer Program Agreement, so this method of install is no longer available.
We understood that the new Xcode signing was designed to allow such use, but Apple has indicated that this should not continue. – f.lux
Presumably, Apple is still O.K with allowing all users to sideload apps via Xcode 7, but took issue with the fact that the app in question was using private APIs.
F.lux’s developers noted that the site hosting the iOS download link was visited almost 200,000 times in the 24 hours it was live, and that the desktop version of f.lux has been downloaded over 15 million times.
