Riley Testut
rileytestut.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2014
Riley Testut, developer of AltStore and the Delta emulator, writes about alternative iOS app distribution and Apple's App Store policies.
What HN saysHN links it for AltStore PAL, an alternative app store in the EU, and for his App Store views. One commenter finds the Apple ID requirement sketchy.
19HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
14stories submitted
68story points
3 months agolast shared
2014people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1AltStore8 people · 23 points · first shared 2019 · 1 comments on HN
- 2AltStore Pal6 people · 33 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 3Thoughts on the App Store, by the dev behind AltStore3 people · 7 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 4Game Boy Emulator GBA4iOS Is Dead1 people · 2 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 5Evolving AltStore PAL – alternative iOS app store connects with the Fediverse1 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 6Delta Lite: NES Emulator for iPad Swift Playgrounds1 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
vrganj · 2026-08-11
Yup. https://rileytestut.com/blog/2024/04/17/introducing-altstore-pal/
whazor · 2024-07-06
The first app store approved is Altstore PAL: https://rileytestut.com/blog/2024/04/17/introducing-altstore-pal/
geoah · 2024-04-25
Probably not the first but ok. https://rileytestut.com/blog/2024/04/17/introducing-altstore-pal/
mometsi · 2023-03-20
This blog post by the author provides the backstory:
https://rileytestut.com/blog/2020/10/14/thoughts-on-app-store/
duskwuff · 2019-09-26
From the author's blog post on how AltStore works [1]:
> For this distribution method, AltStore requires your Apple ID and password to communicate on your behalf with Apple’s developer servers.
This seems really sketchy, and I would not be surprised if Apple took steps to prevent this, and possibly even to disable Apple IDs associated with this activity.
> The last major restriction is that an iOS device may only ever have at most 3 apps installed using this method, even if they come from different Apple IDs. This was by far the most frustrating one to deal with, but thankfully I was able to find a workaround in time.
The workaround (swapping around provisioning profiles) sounds like it's abusing a bug which Apple could fix pretty easily.
[1]: http://rileytestut.com/blog/2019/09/25/introducing-altstore/
pcr910303 · 2019-09-26
For people who wants to go directly without visiting the article...
This is the AltStore's main link: https://altstore.io
This is the author's launch blogpost: http://rileytestut.com/blog/2019/09/25/introducing-altstore/
And this is the Github repo: https://github.com/rileytestut/AltStore
OkGoDoIt · 2019-09-26
From the author’s blog post, which goes into more technical details:
“While there’s nothing I could do about this from the iOS device itself, as it turns out the same underlying iTunes (WiFi) sync infrastructure I’m using allows you to also install and remove provisioning profiles from devices (since Xcode also requires this ability to manage profiles for developers). Before installing an app, I remove all the existing profiles on the device to make it look to the system like there are no other apps installed, and then once the app is installed I reinstall all the profiles. It’s very simple, but it works.”
http://rileytestut.com/blog/2019/09/25/introducing-altstore/