Bluetooth OnOff, an incredibly useful app which does one thing — toggle your iPhone’s Bluetooth connection on and off — has inevitably been pulled from the App Store. The 99-cent Universal app used private APIs to work its magic, and is now sadly consigned to the trashcan, along with data-tethering apps and other much-missed utilities.
IOS has many APIs (application programming interface) which developers use to make their apps work with iPhone and iPad hardware and software. Some are public and supported, and some are off limits. Some private APIs are later made public, but private APIs are strictly off-limits for anyone but Apple. Sometimes this is just because they aren’t yet fully-baked, and Apple wants to be able to ditch them or change them substantially without breaking everybody’s apps.
And low-level access to the Bluetooth radio is one of these. Frankly, its a little odd that OnOff stayed around for so long, considering that its purpose was made pretty obvious by both the icon and the one-button interface. There is a crappy peer-to-peer messaging feature in there, too, but who would ever use that?
Thankfully, I have the app squirreled safely away in my iTunes library, and if you read our original post about the app, you will already have it, too. The rest of you can continue to enjoy multiple button-presses and menu navigation just to switch Bluetooth on and off.
[Via TUAW]
Charlie Sorrel writes reviews and how-tos. Follow Charlie on Twitter at @mistercharlie, and at micro.blog on @mistercharlie
4 responses to “Bluetooth OnOff App Pulled From App Store”
Wait, people use Bluetooth?
Come again, if I have already bought it, how do I save it for the future in case I need to re-install iOS for whatever reason?
I just leave Bluetooth on?
Leaving Bluetooth on is a major drain on your battery. The only time I use Bluetooth would be for external speakers or when I use the personal hotspot feature. But yes it is a 3 step pain to turn it on and off again etc but hey there are worse things to complain about. :)