Detect incoming SMS or iMessage without Jailbreak

Question

In my app, I'm simply trying to detect an incoming SMS or iMessage. I don't need to know where it came from or its content, just that it came in. I've seen lots of jailbreak solutions. Is there a way to do this in iOS 6 without jailbreaking?

Auriga

The question is whether you need this to be approved in the app store, or not? If not, then you can use Private APIs, or undocumented features, so long as they don't require jailbreaking. So, can you clarify whether it needs to be App Store approvable, or just able to function properly on a phone that's not jailbroken? – Barker

Yes it needs to approvable. Unfortunately, I've not found a way to do this. I'm intending to use this in a notification device based on BLE. I've heard rumor that Apple is holding back this functionality in order to make their own smart watch. Guess I'll have wait to see. – Auriga

Unfortunately, I think you're out of luck, then. This can be done with undocumented or unsupported features, that don't actually require jailbreaking. But, it wouldn't be approvable for the App Store. – Barker

Been looking for the same exact thing without any luck. Have you found a solution? – Dagny

No, Apple walls all of this off to protect the phone user from malicious or unaware apps that may get in the way of doing things like making emergency calls and messages. Seems iPhone is first and formost a phone. Go figure. – Auriga

You say that you've seen many jailbreak solutions. Could you provide any examples of this? I need to do this on a jailbroken iPhone but I can't find examples anywhere. Thanks! – Lint

Answer 1

It looks like it is impossible to do that without JailBreaking.

source: react on incoming sms on an iPhone

Seductive

It's not actually true that you can't do this without jailbreaking. You can use undocumented/unsupported features to listen for Core Telephony notifications that are triggered when the message comes in, and use undocumented background modes to keep your app alive in the background. They just aren't App Store approvable. – Barker

That's right, App store approval is important to most developers however. I remember hearing of some android Dev's that used some undocumented NDK features to handle some unapproved functionality that I was after, the difference being that the play store doesn't screen as intensely as apple so the apps could kick around for a while until they got found out. (might have been a similar situation for iOS too, auto SMS replying tools out there shouldn't be possible given the API (I think...)) – Seductive

If mspy.com/buynow.html achieved that then IT IS possible. If your app doesn't need to go via the app store (company internally use for example) then it could be achieved. – Maremma