Information for new developers

[MarcelloMorena]

Any chance you have some information or reference material for new developers wanting to start contributing? Or maybe just a finger in the right direction for learning materials on contributing to an iOS tweak like this? Thanks!

[SoCuul]

Hi! Super excited to see people wanting to help contribute. I’m going to paste my response to someone else who asked me the same question recently:

To get a grasp of objective-c, I referenced a fair amount of Apple’s documentation archive which is invaluable for learning about objective-c and iOS/macOS platform fundamentals. The syntax of the language is quite different from others, due to how it functions internally. However once you get the hang of it, it makes a lot of sense.

For the app tweaking side of things, the easiest way to mess around is definitely with a jailbroken device. I didn’t have one personally, so I had to go through other methods (resigning & reinstalling the app each time I changed something), before LiveContainer released. Your best friend is FLEX, which when injected into an app allows you to navigate the internal view hierarchy and view countless details about the app while it’s running.

Any sort of app tweaking will require a fair amount of effort, as you find out the inner-workings of the app and how everything comes together. I would recommend having a rudimentary knowledge at least of programming concepts. Additionally, I would read up on Apple’s archived documentation as mentioned before, to further your understanding of how Apple’s frameworks and the iOS system interact.

In particular with the Instagram app, I would use FLEX along with header dumps from the Instagram (and FBSharedFramework) binaries, to get an idea of how the Instagram app is built. Also reading through the existing SCInsta code to understand shared concepts throughout the apps (KVC-based viewmodels, list datasources powered by IGListKit, etc.) Also you can consult the Internal Instagram Names wiki page to decypher what some of the internal headers/methods reference frequently.

[MarcelloMorena]

Amazing, thanks for the detailed reply!

[sandeep1027]

Do flex work without jailbreak i have installed your tweak instagram but when enable flex it dose nothing...

[SoCuul]

FLEX should work on jailed installs just by enabling it in the debug settings. Have you tried enabling all of the FLEX settings and seeing if it appears when you restart the app?

[sandeep1027]

tried with non jailed phone it not working but i go way to add/edit/bug in your source 👍 i fixed some bugs add new feature and thanks for you source