Question

Can we retrieve the applications currently running in iPhone and iPad?

UPDATE

Can we do it in jail broken phones? Can we do it for an app for CYDIA Store?

Answer 1

You can get a list of running processes and from process ids may be you can figure out which ones are system processes and which one are 3rd party apps, but anyway I don’t believe you can use it in application for appstore. (code taken from here)

- (NSArray *)runningProcesses {

    int mib[4] = {CTL_KERN, KERN_PROC, KERN_PROC_ALL, 0};
    size_t miblen = 4;

    size_t size;
    int st = sysctl(mib, miblen, NULL, &size, NULL, 0);

    struct kinfo_proc * process = NULL;
    struct kinfo_proc * newprocess = NULL;

    do {

        size += size / 10;
        newprocess = realloc(process, size);

        if (!newprocess){

            if (process){
                free(process);
            }

            return nil;
        }

        process = newprocess;
        st = sysctl(mib, miblen, process, &size, NULL, 0);

    } while (st == -1 && errno == ENOMEM);

    if (st == 0){

        if (size % sizeof(struct kinfo_proc) == 0){
            int nprocess = size / sizeof(struct kinfo_proc);

            if (nprocess){

                NSMutableArray * array = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

                for (int i = nprocess - 1; i >= 0; i--){

                    NSString * processID = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%d", process[i].kp_proc.p_pid];
                    NSString * processName = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%s", process[i].kp_proc.p_comm];

                    NSDictionary * dict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjects:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:processID, processName, nil] 
                                                                        forKeys:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"ProcessID", @"ProcessName", nil]];
                    [processID release];
                    [processName release];
                    [array addObject:dict];
                    [dict release];
                }

                free(process);
                return [array autorelease];
            }
        }
    }

    return nil;
}: