Asking mac address of Bluetooth on ios device from user

Question

pungsani OP

Created Apr ’17

Replies 3

Boosts 0

Views 8.4k

Participants 4

Hi, all.

I'm currrently developing an iOS app and a printer which communicate via Bluetooth classic(not BLE).

As you know, it's quite inconvenient that user has to reconnect to printer if disconnected.

To resolve this, we found a solution that if device(printer in our case) knows the MAC address of Bluetooth on user's iOS device, then it can reconnect to the iOS device automatically once the device was paired before.

Thus, in my app, I have to get the MAC address of Bluetooth on customer's iOS device and send it to the printer so that the printer can reconnect to the iOS device automatically.

I know that there's no API for getting the MAC address of Bluetooth, but I want to know whether it's ok to get the MAC address with user interaction explicitly like asking user to insert the MAC address in the app(with the explanation of the purpose stated above).

Please let me know if it violates any guidelines of apple's policy for developing iOS apps.

If it's not accepted, then I have to find another way.

Thank you.

Boost

Answer 1

PBK OP

Apr ’17

No guarantees regarding what will or won't be approved - this is just IMHO.

There is nothing in the guidelines preventing a user from volunteering this information to your app. But do you have some way of getting the MAC Adress of the device? It can no longer be done through iOS. Also - you can't 'require' that the user provide personal information for the app to function - so your app has to do something even if the user refuses to provide this information.

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Answer 2

KMT OP

Apr ’17

You might be ok on the manual input/Privacy topic, but only if users can opt-in, but then if they decline, they can't use your printer, which seems to be the only purpose of making an app? Do they input the address to the app, or into a panel on the printer, or connect using the web, or?

I think as the printer manuf. this might be ok, tho. It all comes down to how app review sees things in your example, and they're not here.

They don't give pre-reviews, but it couldn't hurt to call them up and ask, I think - numbers here.

Good luck and let us know how you get on if you have the time later, thanks.

Ken

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Answer 3

chuckc192000 OP

Apr ’17

You can see the MAC address of the device by going to Settings->General->About, but the user would have to write it down then type it into the field of your app. That seems like a lot of work that few users would be willing to do.

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