LiveContainer-Plus — Cert Alerts, Backups, Bulk Sources

LiveContainer-Plus is a fork of LiveContainer aimed at the point where sideloading stops being clever and starts being admin. If you run one or two apps in a container, upstream LiveContainer is fine. If you run twenty, you eventually hit the same four chores — finding anything in the list, losing everything when a container goes, discovering your certificate expired yesterday, and pasting sources in one at a time. The fork adds a feature for each.

What it changes

All four additions are in the project’s own README, and each maps to a complaint you can find in any sideloading thread:

• App groups — create groups, filter chips across the top of the list, and “Add to Group” in the long-press menu. The list stops being one flat wall of icons.
• Backup and restore — one archive of every container and setting, restorable behind a confirmation sheet, with optional scheduled auto-backup on launch. This is the one that matters most: containers hold app data, and until now losing the container lost the data.
• Certificate health monitoring — a days-left banner above the list and a local notification before expiry, with renewal presented as one visible operation instead of a thing you remember too late.
• Bulk AltStore source import — paste a list, add them all, refresh in parallel, and export the list back out as JSON.

What it does not change

It is a fork, not a rewrite. Requirements stay upstream’s: iOS or iPadOS 15+, with multitasking on 16+. JIT behaves as it does in LiveContainer, and the project points at upstream’s documentation rather than restating it.

Two builds are published — standalone, and one with SideStore built in. One caveat worth knowing before you pick: extensions need signing capabilities that a free developer account strips, and without them LiveProcess multitask mode and the share sheet stop working. That is not a bug in the fork; it is the free tier, and it is the same wall that pushes people toward a paid certificate.

Where it fits

LiveContainer exists because a free Apple ID gives you three app slots, and running apps inside one container turns three into effectively unlimited. That mechanic — and how the SideStore stack fits around it — is covered in what LiveContainer is and how unlimited sideloading works. LiveContainer-Plus does not change that mechanic; it makes living with it survivable.

Worth being clear about the trade: a fork is maintained by one person, tracks upstream on its own schedule, and can fall behind after an iOS update. The features it adds are conveniences, not fixes to how signing works — the certificate still expires on the same day, you just get told about it.

The alternative to managing any of this

Everything above is the free-account path: containers, expiry dates, refresh cycles and the tooling that softens them. The other path is not to run the machinery at all — on builds.io apps are signed for you and stay signed, so nothing expires in seven days and there is no certificate to monitor. If you would rather stop refreshing sideloaded apps every seven days, that comparison is the one to read.